


(the cuckoo is a fine bird) he sings as he flies

by americanjedi



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Creature Ciri, Creature Jaskier, Gen, Good Renfri, I just wanted to get back on the fanfic horse, I'm going to be honest with you guys, Music, No Lesbians Die, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, The power of friendship, Timeline Shenanigans, children welcome to my trash fire, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 53,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22340365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: The cuckoo is a fine bird he sings as he flies,He brings us good tidings and tells us no lies.He sucks the sweet flowers to make his voice clear,And the more he cries cuckoo, the summer is nigh.Jaskier keeps secrets and then he keeps Singing. (And then he keeps watch over Ciri.)
Comments: 237
Kudos: 541





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is very silly and not very good. I'm so proud of myself for writing again though that I want to post it anyway. I had a bad experience with fanfiction and it's been holding me back and so writing and finishing something really means a lot to me. If you've got this far I hope you enjoy it! I know it's a bit of a trash fire, but a trash fire still gives off warmth and light - at least for me wandering through the darkness of writing anxiety. So here we go!

Julian ran into the room to his mother, his short fingers tangled with her long and lovely ones. _“Mummy!”_ he sang out, voice bright and placed his cheek against the back of her hand. A bright bubble of gold lit up his chest. Mummy smelled like sunlight and birdsong and ink.

“Hello, my little buttercup,” she said.

Julian dashed over to his father, pulling at his fingers as well. His father’s beard was blond tilting toward red, he smelled like steadfastness and wool and love. When he sang, _“Father,”_ that golden bubble in his chest grew larger. He felt floaty and full like he’d eaten a thick slab of bread with butter and honey. 

“Julian, this is your new tutor,” Father said, waving to someone. “Mistress Gajos, and here’s her niece Odessa.” 

There was a woman standing there with a girl who looked a little older than him by her side. Julian had been distracted, he was often distracted. His father would put him on one of the big chairs in the study with a curiosity box and Julian would talk to him while he worked about all the things inside it. Seashells and bird feathers and acorn caps. Usually Julian knew where everyone was all the time, but the woman surprised him. He chest had been empty and he knew his parents would fill it up again (it never occurred that they might do anything but take care of him). The woman – Mistress Gajos – was short and lean, but soft. When she smiled at Julian her eyes smiled too. As soon as he saw her he knew he wanted to hug her. The little girl grinned at him, darting forward to grab his hands and then darting back again.

“Oh!” he said, pleased by the contact. 

“Won’t it be nice to have someone your own age to play with?” Father said, which really meant someone to play with who wouldn’t push him down or pinch his arms.

Her grin was huge and her eyes sparkled like raindrops reflecting the sky. 

“Hello Julian,” the woman said and Julian stood up to really look at her. She smelled like- She smelled like- him. She smelled like Julian and she sounded like him too. Something in her voice was like the ringing of a bell. Her eyes smiled, bright blue and shining, “Hello, Julian. I hear you like singing.”

***

The Countess de Stael offered Geralt a polite nod as she entered the study, there was a coldness that seemed more of reservation than fear. Geralt was startled looking at her. She wasn’t as lovely as he thought she would be. Jaskier couldn’t shut up about her, and here she was looking, well- Looking overweight and soft featured, she wasn’t ugly by any means, but well- There was no slim wrist or long neck, no thick mane of hair or a large bosom, the sorts of things men talked about wanting in a woman. Her eyes were very dark. Intelligent eyes, and she had good bones to her. Everyone had their own tastes.

She looked like she belonged in a prissy little room, that she knew how to navigate it. She wandered over to a fussy little table, barely looking at him.

“Thank you for meeting with me. I’m Geralt of Rivia, I’m searching for a bard named Jaskier.”

“Jaskier?” she asked with just the right amount of not particularly caring in her voice to shut him down entirely. She put her hand on her chest in one of those little lying imitations of real human emotion that nobles were so fond of performing but she wasn’t even looking at him in favor of going through her letters. “Of Rivia, you say?”

“No,” he tried not to growl. “I’m of Rivia. I’m looking for Jaskier the bard.”

“Oh,” she said, looking at the front and back of a letter. “Where’s he from?”

Geralt blinked at her. He didn’t actually know. “He’s unmistakable. Chatters constantly, can’t stop singing. Dark hair, blue eyes? Likes women? He has a song about kissing?”

She looked at him and blinked as if she had just noticed he was there. “Oh, that sound sweet. We’re not planning any sort of soiree, we don’t need a bard.”

Geralt tried very hard not to cleave her fancy little table in two with his sword.

“I’m not _advertising_ for him. I’m trying to find him,” Geralt gritted out.

“Oh, well good luck then,” she said and gathered up her letters. She moved with the sort of elegance that came from self-confidence and Geralt caught a good look at her face before she looked away again. “I can’t be of any help to you, sorry.”

Obviously she was lying, but now he was certain. She was deliberately lying, deliberately having him on and doing an excellent job of it. For the moment she walked into the room she was in total control of the conversation. His estimation of her went up several degrees – as did his irritation. He took a deep breath and tried again.

“Countess, I know you know him. He mentioned you by name. If you’re worried I’ve been sent by some angry husband you don’t need to be. Witchers don’t take jobs like that. I’m not on the behest of some cuckold.”

“That’s not,” the Countess began to say as if on instinct then snapped her teeth together so sharply that it sounded like it hurt. She took a deep breath and a new smooth expression slipped over her face with an ease that would have put Yennifer to shame. She really was an intelligent woman. “That’s not what I’m concerned about.”

“I know you know him,” Geralt told her. “He always spoke very highly of you. I’m only trying to find him. He was seen in the company of a child and they need help.” The scent of fear suddenly spiked into the room.

“I’m sorry, Witcher,” she said, her smile gracious and meaningless. “I know a bit about Witchers. I have nothing against you personally. I understand the way the world works more than people think. Anyone can be called a monster if they’re thought to much about, no matter how fair it is or how right. If you don’t mind me saying, your lot is a necessary evil that does a lot of good. But there’s nothing good that will come of this. I want you to leave.”

Geralt had heard worse. “Countess-”

“This is my house and I want you to leave. Whatever monster you think you’re hunting there’s no information for you here. My suggestion is to move on. If nothing else, a bard is constantly on the move, and while you’re welcome to check behind the curtains I can assure you he’s not here.”

If she was lying she was hiding something, but she was clearly not going to say anything else on the subject. It suddenly occurred to him there was no guard in the room with them. A noblewoman having an audience with a witcher all alone? She really was hiding something.

He waited in the tree by the garden wall until the next morning when there was a sudden howling of a cat that woke him like a thunder bolt. A streak of gray and brown flashed from the garden wall.

“Wait! Wait!” came the voice of a little boy, running after it with what had likely been a bowl of cream before it had been splashed all over the garden. “Don’t run away!”

The boy chased the cat around the garden chattering at it, Geralt was rather rooting for the cat. He knew what it was like to be hounded by someone who wouldn’t just leave things alone.

A man strolled out to the garden dressed in plain but colorful clothes. He was tall with a knot of dark hair at the back of his head and an expression like he’d just been told a good joke. He made a laughing, singing sort of sound and the little boy ran over to him – hopefully leaving the poor cat to recover.

“Look Master Ambrose!” the boy said, laughing. “I found a snail! It’s a big one! Can we put it in my box by the window?”

The man bent over to examine the snail. “What a fine gentleman! Excellent work, sunflower. Get some leaves for him to eat and come in for breakfast. And no more sneaking out! Your mother said you’re to stay inside today.”

“Master _Ambrose,”_ the boy whined.

“Come along, no use in whining about it. If you do well at your history lesson then I’ll teach you a new song today to make up for it. Though I absolutely have to ask, why do you smell like milk?” 

The man, the tutor, held out his hand and the little boy let himself be led in describing his adventure the whole way. 

There were a couple of servants who snuck out mid-morning to grope at each other and another two who snuck out mid-afternoon to gossip. One wouldn’t believe it, but Tess had gotten a new embroidered apron from a new suitor who worked for the tailor and wasn’t that a lovely gift what a good match that would make. Then almost at dusk, the Countess appeared with the little boy again who was dancing circles around her. “Thank you, mummy!” the boy said. “Thank you!”

“Only for a little while and then we have to go back in again,” she told him.

 _“Mummy, mummy! How I love you!”_ the little boy sang, he hopped and skipped around her singing a funny little song that barely rhymed and made little sense. The boy’s love for his mother shone out of his face like sunlight and all of a sudden Geralt thought about Vesemir. He didn’t know why, just the… the thought of being a child and Vesemir being there sort of brushed its way in his memory. He shook his head, brow furrowed with his eyes set on the boy. That little hopping skip he did, the bright blue of the boy’s eyes and his chattering and Geralt knew – this was Jaskier’s son. It suddenly made sense why the Countess was so insistent she didn’t know Jaskier.

The door opened again and out came a man who looked hard, like an old wild creature snarling in his burrow. The Countess looked up and the happiness that had been shining out of her cracked, her shoulders lifting as if to protect her face for a moment before she forced herself to relax.

Geralt’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. 

“Wife,” the man said, voice harsh and then performed an awkward sort of half bow to her.

“Daddy!” the boy almost shouted, his whole body lighting up at the joy of his good luck. The boy ran across the garden, hands outstretched and all the Count’s quiet viciousness was gone. While the boy chattered away the old man tucked his head into his son’s shoulder with a sort of grief, the Countess relaxed her shoulders and looked relieved in a private moment before she schooled her face again.

The Count set the boy on his hip making an attempt at smiling while his son chattered on.

“How’s my little sunflower today?” the Count asked, voice like an ax against stone.

“I found a cat, Daddy! I love him! He’s my best friend!” the boy gestured wide. If someone told Geralt they’d turned Jeskier into a child, the boy was precisely what he’d expect.

“Not that old thing that keeps getting in the garden?” the Count grumbled. “That thing is foul, sunflower. And possibly undead, how many times have we tried to kill it?” The tone he used bordered on sadistic, the Countess just smiled prettily up at him, her dark eyes carefully, nonthreateningly vacant.

“You don’t want to be around that ugly old thing. It’s only fit for drowning,” the Count continued.

The boy grabbed hold of his father’s face with both hands, “No, Daddy! He’s my best friend. Promise you’ll love him too, Daddy. Promise. He’s a good old cat. I wrote a song about him fighting rats, he’s a hero!”

“Asimir,” the Count rumbled in his chest and the Countess twitched like a puppet that had its strings jerked.

“Daddy,” the boy said with more solemnity than Geralt had heard at some funerals. “If you kill my cat then my heart will break in two and I’ll die forever. He’s my best friend. He’s a good cat. He an enemy to rats and a friend to this family.”

Something in Geralt’s chest twisted up in his guts all full of spiderwebs and something that almost felt like guilt. He left as quickly and quietly as possible. He didn’t need to be spying on the family anyway. He knew now what the Countess was hiding there was no point staying here.

***

There was a possibility that he and Odessa were way too drunk.

“Odessa, are we too drunk?” he asked the leaves of the tree swaying above him. They were going to go to an inn to celebrate his doing so well Oxenfurt – excelling at such a young age! But they had heard that there was a witcher in town and so had camped in the woods for old times’ sake.

“Jaskier,” she said her hand landing on his shoulder. _“Jaskier._ Jaskier.”

This seemed a good enough argument. He groped for the bottle in her hand but couldn’t find it so she tenderly lifted his head like he was a man dying of thirst and gently poured more wine in. Tears welled in his eyes. “You- You are such, hhhn, you are such a good and noble friend.”

She started crying too. “You’re such a good friend. I’m so proud of you!”

They were repeating back and forth to each other how much they loved each other, staring up at the leaves and the stars when someone driving a cart on the road threw a person at them which was very rude. Odessa shrieked indignantly at the cart, as Odessa did and the cart took off very quickly.

“Odessa!” Jaskier shouted. Sitting up was too hard so he rolled over to the person. “Odessa, it’s somebody hurt!”

She stumbled over and fell on top of him. She was soft and warm so he put his cheek on the grass and closed his eyes. The grass smelled so nice.

“Wake up stupid,” Odessa shouted at him flicking him in the cheek. “They’re hurt! They need our help!”

Indignation filling his body he pushed himself up right, flinging her off his back. She was small so she went really far. “Don’t be mean to me!”

He looked down at the person and ignored the way Odessa was swearing at him and kicking at his feet and butt. She did that sometimes. The woman lying beside the road had blood on her face and was very still. Her hair was short and kind of wavy and about their age. He was already in love with her. Was she wearing some kind of armor? Maybe she was a hero!

“We should Sing her better! Maybe she’ll be so happy we’ll finally have something to feed on!” he told Odessa. “We both know some good old-fashioned healing songs! We can totally do it!”

“That’s brilliant!” she shouted and went for the lutes. He caught his when she tossed it at him before looking down at it in dismay.

“Odessa,” he said, trying not to cry. “Someone put my lute on backwards.”

“Here,” she said, plucking the lute out of his hand and handing him her own. “Mine’s on straight.”

They tuned their lutes together, so used to each other’s music it was more about matching sounds together than anything else.

“Alright,” Odessa said, nodding along. “Alright. Let’s Sing a Song!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Series appropriate gore.

Mistress Gajos circled around behind Julian. “Recite the kings.”

“I can’t,” Julian shuffled. He didn’t want to be doing this, he wanted to be playing with Odessa outside. He missed her. “Why do I even have to learn the kings? They don’t have anything to do with us.”

“They have a lot to do with us, kings control people and we need people. And your parents want you to learn the history of their kingdom,” she told him, hand gentle on his shoulder. “So now, recite the kings.”

Julian made a face. “I can’t remember.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Mistress Gajos asked, circling around again.

“Sambuk?” Julian tried.

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Gajos tilted her head at him.

“Telling you?”

Mistress Gajos smiled that lopsided smile at him that meant he had done something not quite right but wasn’t in trouble for it. “Then tell me.”

“Sambuk,” Julian said, rocking forward on his toes.

“And?”

Julian fell back on his heels. “I-“

“Alright, we’ll try something different. Things are easier when you sing, aren’t they?”

Watchful, Julian nodded. Sometimes people looked at him oddly when he sang too much, but Mistress Gajos had always looked pleased.

“Let’s learn a song then,” she said. “We’ll see how you like the song, if it works then we’ll see what else we can do to learn.”

A few hours later Julian was clapping along to the rhythm of: “-Radovid, Dambor, _Vestibor,_ Radovid Two and _Vizimir-“_

That was how Julian learned his numbers and his nations, his history and his sciences. Julian loved learning and loved Mistress Gajos.

“You’re going to be a great bard,” she told him as they walked through the woods with her in her big hat and him and Odessa sharing the bag for gathering herbs. “The two of you need to be prepared for your adventures. Come look at this, it’s chamomile. Look at the leaves, look at the petals. Chamomile heals and soothes. And come look at this willow tree.”

She sang songs and helped them dry plants for his botany book. There were other things too like teaching them how to make a fire and identify animal tracks. It seemed like there was nothing Mistress Gajos didn’t know; nothing she couldn’t do. Mistress Gajos kept him out of the temple school as well, where Julian heard that literacy came by the cane instead of the song. Some of the things she taught him he showed off to his parents, other things were learned by the firelight with Gajos teaching Odessa and him to play the lute with careful persistence, taught him what all the cords could do.

After Mistress Gajos went to bed he and Odessa clustered together whispering. She lifted up a blanket and put it over their heads. “This is what it looked like when I was born,” she whispered. “The sun was blocked out and the sky was as dark as night.”

He gasped, holding onto his lute, Odessa was so much braver than he was. He would have been too scared to be born during an eclipse. “I wish I had my own second name like you do.”

She shrugged, the blanket bobbing around them. “I got my name early because I had to leave home early. Mistress Gajos said irregularity is the spice of life so it’s okay. I’m still a hatchling, I don’t even have my own Song yet. You’ll finish your training soon and then you can leave as well. Some day I’ll have to be Mistress Anne until my hatchling leaves the nest. I wish my parents had named me better. Do you know what your second name is yet?”

Julian was embarrassed to say yes or no so he just said, “I’m tired.”

“Then the two of you should go to sleep,” Mistress Gajos told them and the two of them collapsed in a huff of trying to pretend they’d been sleeping all along.

***

Ciri twisted against the hands gripping at her, pulling at her. They were so strong, she hadn’t known they were so strong. She felt the strength of each finger around her arms, keeping her off-balance. Korin and Anton were meant to be her friends, they had played together. Everything she thought before had been wrong, everything in her life was a lie. She heard her voice go reedy and small like a baby’s. Horror had never been part of the royal life, but she had heard hints of stories, she knew about the sorts of things that groups of men would sometimes do to a woman alone. What it was, she only had a vague idea, but she knew it was bad. That her friends wanted to hurt her.

The wind carried a sudden sound of music from behind her, far away enough to be barely a whisper. There was something wrong with the tune, something sharp, something _off._ But if there was a lute there was a person, strangeness aside. “Help me!” she screamed out, flinching from the split and spring in her voice. “Help!”

The person started singing, their voice whipping on the wind. There was something wrong with the voice. The sound of the voice was familiar, like something from a dream, but it was so _angry._ So _furious._ So _lonely._ It cut a sharp line across her like a knife. All of them fell screaming to the ground, someone had to have stabbed her. There was so much pain in her back, her arms, and legs. White hot and deep inside. The voice and the lute spun round and round each other like day and night. The boys were covering their ears, gasping. 

_“Hunger is the whetstone.”_ Strum. _“My will the knife.”_ Strum. _“It cuts as I clench it.”_ Strum. _“It slices where I sheath it.”_ Strum. She covered her ears, clenched her eyes closed. She could feel the boys around her as they struggled and kicked. 

She held onto her belly where the terrible stabbing sensation thrummed, terrified as she looked at her trembling body. There was no blood, she felt the pain but there was no blood.

“It’s not real,” she told herself. “It’s not real, it’s just in my head. It’s just in my head.” The grass folded itself under her back, the stars stared down at her.

She hauled back her fist and knocked one of the boys off of herself. Her fingers juddered in shock, but she was not going to stop. “Help me! I’m over here.”

The pain throbbed less now she knew it wasn’t real, but her body ached. She saw a lantern, a light cutting in and out in the trees as someone was running toward her. Anton loomed up over her, grabbing hold of her hair. They went down in a heap, all kicking legs and snapping teeth. Fist clenched against her scalp; Anton tried to bang her head against the ground. The shock of it made her clench up stiff as a board.

“Scream, Ciri!” the voice shouted from the dark. “I can’t get to you in time. Scream!”

Something in her knew what was meant, she knew what the voice wanted her to do. Ciri sucked in a breath and _Screamed._ She felt the way her voice vibrated out into the air like she was everywhere at once like she was the most powerful creature in the world. She felt the intoxication of it. There was a gold moon up in the sky dripping honey, a golden string that spooled around her and she pulled on it. Light and fury swarmed up inside her. _The knife,_ she thought, _it cuts as I clench it, it slices where I sheath it._ The whole world had become sound. The whole world was a resonant Song she peeled to pieces and fed back into itself. It was beautiful. She woke sticky and stiff with blood, someone touching and tugging on her. She shrieked, flailing. 

There was a man looking down at her, the lines of his face creased with worry. “Ciri. Are you alright?”

She flailed back, trying to get her feet up for leverage.

He wore black gloves, but there were gold flowers embroidered on the back, and he looked sad and worried. “Careful!” he shouted just as she sunk her hand into something hot and wet and wrapping around her fingers in ribbons. “Don’t look! Don’t look!” his voice was too loud almost panicked. “Just look at me. Just look at my face.”

Of course, she had to look now. Of course, she had to see what it was. Someone had stabbed Korin to death, someone had stabbed him out of shape into loose bits and pieces.

Her skin rippled like it was going to pull off her and go live happily ever after somewhere else. Someone was screaming, she felt his guts twining around her wrist. Then just as suddenly the man had pulled her away from the mess of blood and her head was tucked under his chin. He sang a lullaby to her that was barely, vaguely familiar. She felt as though she were existing somewhere else, a foot to the right. Watching herself. Through the skin of her forehead, she could feel the vibration of his throat. He was shaking almost as much as she was. Somehow he had moved the three of them away to a clear patch of grass all packed down. 

“Let go of me,” she said. As fast as he had grabbed hold of her he was just as quick to be gone, whole strides away from her with his hands clenching at his sides to match the worry on his face. She fell to the ground, trying to put everything together in pieces. As she had Screamed she had thought about the song with the knife. She had thought about it and now all her friends were cut to pieces. Clop was alright but scared. Rolling his eyes as he kicked at the dirt. 

The man walked over to Clop and hummed to him until the horse went quiet and relaxed.

“Sir,” she said. All that was left of the princess, it felt like, was the ghost of her in that word.

His hand reached out, the black glove and gold flowers. His boots were black as well, his face serious. “Stand up slowly, take my hand. Just take some deep breaths.”

“There was a song,” she told him. “Someone was singing a song. It slices where I sheath it, and then I Screamed.”

“Ciri,” the man said. She knew his voice by instinct, she would smell him somehow. The smell of honey and an open heart, the smell of pain and affection. This was the man who had told her to scream. “I know you don’t know me. I promise I just want to keep you safe, there’s a man after you. I want to get you to safety.”

Just like all her other friends would get her to safety.

“Look,” the man said. “You pick where we go. I’ll give you my coin purse. Please just let me escort you somewhere you can get your feet under you.”

“Why do you care?” she asked, hating how small her voice sounded.

“There’s a way to do this, but the time has passed. I’m your uncle. Your grandmother loved you very much, it just wasn’t safe to, well, but when I heard about the invasion I came as fast as I could,” he helped her to her feet with hands on her elbows. “You might have guessed, but you’ve got some magic in that voice of yours. I do too.”

“Do you?” she asked. She really meant: Something other than pain, something other than another terrible thing. Ciri sort of meant to make some sort of expression with her face, but instead she sort of flinched all over. Fumbling like a blind woman, she grabbed hold of the man’s wrist. “Do you?”

“It’s not always like this. It’s not always blood.” His eyes were kind. He cared about her, she could smell a tired and aching affection on him.

She looked down at him, his eyes big and blue, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Master Julian. That’s how the tradition goes. I’ll be Master Julian until you earn your second name.” She didn’t know what he meant. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t have an uncle, did she? Turning, he pointed to the two horses, gray and brown. “Let’s ride into town, it’s not too far. There’s an inn there, you can have a bath.” Then he reached into his cape and handed her a sort of folded packet full of coins. She could feel the way they all stacked together in there. “Here. Don’t let anyone know you have this. At night put a few of the coins in your pocket so it looks like you don’t have that much money.”

Everything after that happened one at a time like the steps in a dance she had barely learned.

She nodded to him and walked over to the horse. Clop watched her go with sleepy eyes, she hoped he’d be alright. Master Julian boosted her up by letting her use his braced elbow. She steadied herself. He told her the horse’s name was Turnip. She and Turnip ran away as fast as they could. They rode and rode and rode. 

And then they stopped.

There were next to a river so she cried and threw up and cried and got a headache. There was soap and bread and a too big change of clothes in the saddlebag. She washed until it hurt and ate and changed her clothes. She threw her old clothes into the river, except for her grandmother’s sash and then when night fell and it became clear that no one was going to chase her she curled up next to Turnip.

The next day she woke up and ate a little more bread and then rode Turnip back again.

Master Julian was riding his horse at a slow pace so it clopped, clopped, clopped along. It made her feel a little foolish when she realized he had expected she would run away and must have hoped she would come back again to find him. While he rode he played his lute for the horse, it was a song she sort of recognized as the sort she wasn’t meant to hear. Something about a lady blacksmith.

Ciri rode up to him, the too-big clothes warm and heavy around her. They smelled of roses and laughter. There was fur stitched into the collar with a careful, heavy hand. “You didn’t chase me.”

Master Julian raised an eyebrow. “Did you want me to? You weren’t clear about that in your haste.”

“No, well,” she looked at him. His eyes were big, they made him look serious and sad and silly all at once. “There was a man with a bird on his head that’s been chasing me.”

That made Master Julian look angry again. She knew she wasn’t describing it well, the dread she felt at the sight of the man or what the man looked like, but it was obvious he believed her without argument. It occurred to her that might be exploitable. “Did he hurt you?”

Maybe she should say yes. “I don’t know why I rode away like that,” she said instead.

He only shrugged and moved his horse over so she could ride beside him. “Part of being alive is not knowing why we do the things we do and then trying to make the nonsense things we do make sense.”

“I threw my clothes in the river. The ones covered in blood. They were the last things I had of my royal life. Everything I knew was a lie. My grandmother killed babies, lords and ladies keep slaves. My friends were going to-“ she stopped talking.

“Would you like me to sing you a song?” Master Julian asked. “You pick?” 

She watched him pull out a lute from the side of his horse and test the strings. “Do you know _They All Go Round and Round?”_

“The one where various animal see an apple in an apple tree?” he asked her his eyes going back and forth other the strings as if they had written on them something only he could read. The lute went STRUM, STruM, struM as he twisted the little posts.

“Yes. All the animals you can think of please. I feel like I’m going to- to- stab you and steal your horse.”

Master Julian strummed the lute so it made a long warm sound, a sweet honey sound. “Well, I’m all for the dramatic, but let’s avoid that, shall we? Let’s see, it’s been a while but if I remember it. _There once was a big old apple tree, biggest apples you ever did see and the bird said that belongs to me and the bird went round and round and round and the bird went round and round.”_

***

Jaskier moaned into the bush he’d just finished vomiting into. He was not in love with the woman they had healed anymore. He was pretty sure she was a witch sent to destroy them. This was the information they had, she had been dead, not injured after all and also she bit people.

“Put down your sword!” Odessa shouted at the woman and hit her wrist with the metal edge of the lute. 

Jaskier winced in sympathy. He’d been hit by Odessa’s lute before. It was braced with well-polished steel from peg to base thanks to the generous gift of their aunt. The woman cursed, clutching at her wrist. Then with bared teeth she tackled Odessa to the ground.

“Odessa!” Jaskier shouted. Odessa was his best friend and the woman they had healed was possibly rabid. He ran at them, wrapping his arms around the woman to try and pull her off. The stink of blood and death was in her hair. Running and jumping was a bad idea with a hangover, he was going to throw up. The lady flung him spinning through the air into the bushes where he lay moaning in quiet agony until the inside of his head stopped rotating in his brainpan.

He did the only thing he could. He closed his eyes and Sung _The Doe Delights_ from the bushes until he heard the fighting settle down.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, voice still a knife – just one that was sheathed.

“I’m Odessa and that boy in the bushes is Jaskier.”

Jaskier raised a hand in the air to wave.

“Who are you?” Odessa snapped back.

“I’m Renfri,” she said the name like they were supposed to know who she was. 

“I would say lovely to meet you,” Jaskier groused. “But you threw me into the shrubbery.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Renfri told him. “I didn’t mean to throw you so far, you weigh about the same as a wet cat.”

Offense raised its ugly head, but Jaskier’s indignation wasn’t enough to do anything but have him lay there.

“That’s fair,” Odessa told her. “He’s still so small-“

“I’m two months younger than you!” Jaskier called from the bushes, there was a limit. He was a seventeen-year-old man! He grew whiskers!

“He’s a baby, really,” Odessa said.

“I’m two months younger than you!”

Renfri grunted in frustration. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the two of you, but I’m going to kill Stregobor!” 

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Odessa said, raising one finger. “We are not going to do that! You’re supposed to be dead and we’re not supposed to be able to raise the dead. That’s on the banned list for sure.”

Renfri drew another knife. From where? That was what he would like to know. “I’m not letting you kill me again.”

Jaskier swore his way out of the bush, trying to pretend like his trousers weren’t getting all torn up. He had had about enough of this. “Now see here!”

The dagger pointed at him like the needle on a compass, and just as automatically Odessa smacked Renfri’s arm with her lute.

“Alright!” Jaskier said, holding his hands up. “You are both impressive, terrifying women. We all fall down and worship you, can we please have some type of civilized discussion. Like who killed you, might they kill us? Maybe should we leave?”

“Why did they try to kill you?” Odessa asked, other than the obvious reasons.

“I was born during the eclipse,” the woman said, voice tight and angry. “The wizard Stregobor wants to have me killed and cut to pieces.”

Hands on hips, Julian considered her through the fog of his hangover. “That’s so weird.”

Odessa pointed to herself. “I was also born during the eclipse. Stregobor came to get me so my aunt faked my death and took me away. Maybe we brought you to life because of some weird eclipse thing.”

“You can’t have been born burning the eclipse,” Renfri insisted. “All the girls died.”

Strumming a down her lute with a single graceful motion of her hand, Odessa struck a pose. “And yet.”

Renfri cut in over Odessa’s lovely music which was a _crime._ “You say you’re a child of the eclipse, so you’re an abomination as well?”

There was a pause and then Odessa laughed, rich as cream and twice as sweet on the trills. “Oh no, my darling,” Odessa told her, “I’m a bard.”

“So you’ve never killed anyone,” Renfri pressed.

“Who hasn’t these days?” Jaskier said from a safe distance. 

“Not yet.” There was a sort of shrug audible in Odessa’s voice. “But if someone makes it more convenient to stab them instead of Sing to them. Then sure. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

“Got to do what you got to do,” Jaskier repeated, smiling at her.

“They call me the Shrike! I put people up on poles,” she shouted at them.

“Gross,” Jaskier said.

“Stregobor’s told everyone about me! Told everyone how I tortured animals when I was a child.”

“Did you?” Odessa said.

Renfri pulled out another knife (where was she hiding them) and held it up to Odessa’s throat. “Everyone knows I did.”

“Everybody knows a lot of things,” Odessa told Renfri. “Not to sound like my aunt, but just because someone thinks they know something doesn’t mean they do. Did you really torture animals when you were little?” 

Renfri’s hand tightened and loosened on the hilt of her knife. “I can’t remember. I think I did.”

“Might I suggest you not let men who want to cut you up into little pieces tell you what you did or didn’t do?” Odessa said. There was a bit of fear in her eye, but she was holding steady. They were bards, words were their only weapons – they had to use them well. “I mean maybe you are pure evil, but if that’s the case, then isn’t that up to you to decide. I was born during the eclipse and I’m not pure evil and I never tortured anything.”

She looked back and forth between Odessa and Jaskier.

“We didn’t know we could bring anyone back from the dead,” Odessa said. “We don’t do that kind of magic, we’re not mages. You might be in danger. Please let us take you to our aunt so she can make sure you’re alright. Then if you still want to you can go kill whoever you want.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jaskier was hungry. He tended to run lean on satisfaction and high on self-control anyway – despite what people had to say, but it was starting to be enough of a problem. He’d taken up casual humming in the streets hoping for – he didn’t even know what. His hunger to be sated from some heavenly mercy. The inn was a bit of a last-ditch thing, inns were full of people wanting to be entertained. No one was having it and he was about to vacate for plumper pastures when he felt instinct turn its head toward someone. A man in the dark in the corner. Coin toss if it was a wizard or mage – one never lost when they bet against themselves – someone who could relieve some of this ache in his chest. The important thing was that wizards and mages had adventures and adventures meant ballads and ballads meant happy people and happy people meant his hunger would be relieved.

There was a rhythm to conversations, a give and a take, and Jaskier had great rhythm. “I love the way you just sit in the corner and brood.” He could feel his posture bloom open. Welcoming, happy, nonthreatening.

The man looked away from him. Those golden eyes were fantastic and just on brand for Jaskier. White hair and golden eyes, he knew him. Renfri had spoken about Geralt some. From the little she said, he was a good man if troubled. “I’m here to drink alone.”

“Good,” Jaskier nodded. Stoics never really liked him, they found him threatening to their angst. The tastiest nut was often the hardest to crack, or maybe that was the other way around. And the man stunk of loneliness and hurt. Perfect person to have a little sweetness in their life.

The man just looked at him as if there was a joke Jaskier wasn’t getting. At this point Jaskier was almost desperate enough to allow himself to be laughed at. “No one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance except for you. Come on,” he struck a bit of a pose, not too silly, but just enough to welcome whatever he got. “You don’t want to keep a man with bread in his pants waiting.” 

What a great line. He was stunned by his own brilliance. What a great line. He felt a spark of humor in Geralt’s chest. He did his best to keep the conversation rolling even as Geralt rolled out the door, he was stopped from throwing himself on Geralt’s back and begging by a man offering the witcher a job. Thanks be to fortune.

He thanked fortune all the way into the mountains. Punch to the stomach not withstanding Geralt thought he was funny, Jaskier could feel it. He was going to follow Geralt to his next meal if it killed him. Then of course there were elves. Of course, there were elves. The elves had known them in the old times. Any agreement that may have existed between their peoples became null when the Valley of Plenty was overwhelmed. 

One thing was made clear in this little power play back and forth, Geralt was a man with a great pain inside him and a great heart. Destiny pulled her strings and fortune tipped the scale, but someone great – someone good could do more than the machinations of either. And that someone needed a little something extra on their side. Jaskier couldn’t Sing away the swing of a blade, but he might be able to Sing away someone’s desire to swing their sword in the first place.

He decided – with the ease of falling off a cliff - that if Filavandrel killed Geralt he’d Sing the sort of ruin on him that would be spoken of in legend.

Jaskier’s own people who were so dependent on others were forced into seclusion to protect themselves. They had learned to live lean. They had learned to live with hunger. They could have done to have a few people like Geralt to speak for them.

How strange and sad to see himself in two mirrors at once, the Clans had survived better than the elves. They visited the nest of the stranger and survived, survived, survived. Then on the other side, how many Songs went silent in the Cleansing? How often did people eat grain that had grown from the flesh of his people and how often would they have hated the world for it if they didn’t need it so much.

Jaskier hadn’t even been alive back then. All he knew of it he had learned from second hand sources that were too tired of the grief and bored of the pain to hold onto it anymore.

The witcher was like him, learning to live with humans, learning to survive.

Jaskier- Jaskier couldn’t leave him. Not until he’d done something to help ease his way.

They were cut loose, arrangements were made among them and Geralt by some miracle agreed to help the elves ready themselves. Jaskier clenched his hands in front of him, reaching for a lute that wasn’t there. Geralt was out of earshot and this was probably the only chance Jaskier would have. He was so hungry.

Even in exile the elves had made and effort to beautify things, there was a subtle elven touch – a rounding and a smoothing. He followed the tunnel to what Filavandrel must have been using as a study and knocked. There was a tense moment before the king waved him in, barely acknowledging him.

Jaskier took a deep breath in. “I think it’s best I write a song about how the mighty witcher slayed all the wicked elves. Something catchy so people will repeat the story.”

Filavandrel looked up at him, eyes narrowed.

Jaskier tried again to get through, form a connection. “No one hunts people who are already dead. Except witchers, and well, I think the two of you talked that out pretty well. So no danger there.”

“Do you want thanks for your kind deed?” the king snapped at him.

“No. It’s not really kind. If you had killed Geralt I would have probably done something horrible. I’m attached to him.” Jaskier realized as he said it that the king hadn’t sensed him. Hadn’t known what Jaskier was.

The king’s whole body twitched in irritation. ”Why are you telling me this?”

“I think you knew my aunt,” Jaskier said. “Not my aunt, but one of my aunts.”

Filavandrel looked at him like he’d gone mad for a moment before answering, “I doubt it.”

“Her name was Belladonna. She- She Sang wisdom. About white ships and silver woods, the owl in the moonlight,” Jaskier told him and thought his miscalculated until his eyes cleared suddenly with memory and a sort of horror. 

“Belladonna Silvertongue,” the king whispered. “I- I do remember her. Your aunt? That means that you're-?”

“I’m a cuckoo,” he answered.

“That means some of you survived.” The king’s eyes are far away in memory, a mix of horror and relief. “Everything had been so destroyed, everyone was in such a panic. I didn’t know how many of you got out.”

“She was your friend,” he hissed in Elder. “She couldn’t defend herself.”

The king flinched back, body folding around what Jaskier had said. “I buried Belladonna myself,” Filavandrel answered, voice tense and sharp. “With her harp in her hands.”

“I’m sure that was a great comfort to her,” Jaskier bit out and had to close his eyes for a moment.

“She was your… aunt?” the king asked, as if the word rusty was in his mouth. “I know that’s important to you. Your people. Human shaped cuckoos. I suppose it seems obvious now, I don’t’ know why it wouldn’t have occurred to me before. Only the ones I knew looked so very much like elves. You’ll place your chick in any nest that’s safe.”

“You don’t need to worry about us we’re surviving, hiding in plain sight,” Jaskier told him.

“What about the others?” Filavandrel asked. “I could only ever find Belladona.”

“Dula and Mataj. They didn’t make it,” Jaskier answered quick like pulling out a thorn. “My progenitor got out. He almost starved to death by the time he reached the coast, but he survived. Lish survived too, but well-”

Filavandrel’s face darkened for a moment into something darker than rage at the name before he seemed to shake it off with monumental force. “Will something be done about it?”

“Lish has… calmed a great deal, he’s being managed,” Jaskier assured him. “We can’t- There are so few of us now.”

“We’ve all lost people,” the king nodded in pained understanding. “Do you want to go with us? It’s not safe for you to travel with a witcher.”

“He doesn’t know. I pass well.” Jaskier paused to give the moment gravity and then knelt. “Please. In- In the old days after the conjunction your people let us Sing for them. Back in the days of the old Songs. Filavandrel aen Fidhail of the Silver Towers and House of Feleaorn of the White Ships. I hunger. I need to feed.”

Filavandrel sat and suddenly looked every inch a king, chin high and back straight. The both of them needed the ritual of it. Both of them needed to erase the feelings between their races even if only for the two of them. He placed a hand on Jaskier’s head for a moment before lifting it away. Jaskier wasn’t old times old, but he could read an audience. After a moment the king spoke over Jaskier’s head to his guards. “Neither of you are to speak of this to anyone.”

Jaskier Sang him the old Songs as well as one of his own, _Merry, It’s Morning_ and _Sweetgrass In The Meadow_ and _Dandelions and Daffodils_. Filavandrel sat on a wooden stool in a cave with his eyes closed and his hand over his mouth and looked more noble and regal than any king who’d ever lived. He glowed with golden light, all the regal majesty of a meadow in spring. There were tears on his face for happy memories and fireflies and the whisper of laughter on the breeze. Silver towers and days without want. Jaskier loved him with all his heart, a great golden moon dripping with honey. Filavandrel opened his eyes and looked down at him, face so kind it hurt to look. “Oh, little one.”

The old nostalgic happiness poured out of him in golden waves, all the simple and noble joys of an immortal life. Jaskier drank from his happiness until he was relaxed and sated, full for the first time in too long, fuller then he’d been since he learned to control his hunger. 

“Do you want to come with us?” the king asked again. There is real feeling in his voice, a longing so palpable for old times it bleed like a pierced heart.

It was so tempting, so tempting. He saw his path unspool in front of him, no more leanness. Golden meals every time he opened his mouth. Not another word spoken except in song. A place of buttercups and honey. But Geralt had offered his life for Jaskier, and that meant something. More than an old king dreaming of an old reign. The bard was not a fool, he drank enough of the nectar of human feeling to know what could happen to a man like Geralt without someone easing the way. He knew what would happen if he let himself get fat on sweetness. He shook his head. “I can’t, my Song takes me elsewhere.” 

“It’s an indelicate question, but I remember your people’s customs. You are all cuckoos,” the king said. “We could stand to have Songs among us again.”

Julian didn’t even bother to calculate time and Geralt’s reaction, he wasn’t going to hide a cuckoo among a hunted people. Not that he’d tell the king that. People got funny about things.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to say goodbye. If we meet again I hope it will be in good company,” Jaskier demurred. 

The king only smiled, only nodded.

Toruviel handed Jaskier a lute with a look of startled affection. “Sorry about your lute, I didn’t know what you were.”

Jaskier shrugged. She was really quite beautiful and fierce. He exclaimed over it with pleasant words, honestly too well fed to put his usual enthusiasm in it. She laughed, bright and golden and hugged him.  
When they pulled back Geralt was just standing there like the odd bird he was giving the both of them a look.

“Hmm,” he said.

Jaskier was so fond of him. “Come along, witcher!” Jaskier told him. “Adventure awaits.”

***

“This isn’t some adventure,” Renfri said in a sharp note, dragging them out of the bar fight in the inn. “You could get hurt. Stupid goslings.”

“It’s fine!” Jaskier told her. “We’re very durable. The innkeeper broke a bottle over my head and I don’t even have a scratch!” He lifted up his hair to show her his smooth forehead, but that seemed to make her even angrier.

Dealing with Renfri was difficult. Their flippancy and laughter seemed to be driving Renfri over the edge. Surviving as a cuckoo required a relentless sense of humor. Pleasant people made friends, and cuckoos with friends were less likely to starve. Odessa and Jaskier weren’t actually children, their hijinks were just a way of navigating a world that had no space for them. As he grew older everyone he knew was going to die before him, so were their children, so were their children’s children. 

“We’re sorry, Renfri,” Jaskier said.

“You just had to sleep with them!” Renfri hissed, shaking them both by their back collar. “A married woman! You couldn’t wait! I understand you two need to feed, but keep the rest of the cuckoo stuff to yourselves.”

Odessa and Jaskier looked at each other. The married woman had been ideal, unhappy in the marriage because of lack of children, but had a good home, plenty for a hatchling to feed on, the parents were rich – the perfect place to hide a hatchling. Maybe it would take, maybe it wouldn’t, but the opportunity was there and so they acted. They weren’t to know the husband would find them. People became odd about that sort of thing. Instinct shut their mouth about it though. Renfri didn’t seem in the mood for an explanation.

Renfri shook them again. “I thought the two of you needed to get me to your magic bard teachers to figure out what happened. I’m tired of the two of you singing that healing song at me every night. It gets stuck in my head and goes round and round there until morning.”

“But what if we don’t and you die, Renfri?” Odessa asked. “We can’t take that chance.”

“We love you Renfri,” Jaskier said, heart in his eyes, granted just like they’re been in his eyes for half the inn. Still, he was awful fond of her. “You rescued us! You’re a hero!” He leaned forward to Odessa, feeling a little desperate to change the subject. “We should write a ballad about her.”

Odessa closed an eye for a moment in thought than strummed something in minor key that made the hairs stand up on Jaskier’s arms and Renfri jerk to a stop like she’d been shot. “Jaskier, what rhymes with land?”

“Band? Stand? Hand? Fanned?”

Renfri shook the two of them – her new favorite sport and the two of them grumbled about it, but something in her face was slightly different than before. Like maybe she hadn’t really believed the two of them had raised her from the dead at all until she’d heard what Odessa played.

 _“Blood like blossom on the snow, oh fairest maid, the sword of justice in your hand,”_ Odessa Sang.

“She impaled people,” Jaskier reminded her.

“The pike of justice in your hand, how like the shrike at his play, you slay the night to save the day. Blood is the woman’s ink, she writes her story with it. She writes her place in steel and lace, the world is better for it.”

Renfri was standing very still.

“It needs work,” Jaskier told her, pulling out his notebook. “Some of it barely rhymes and it’s inconsistent.”

“The idea’s still there,” Odessa said. “Fairest maiden, wordplay to mean justice. Blood is a woman’s ink, she writes her story with it.”

“What about something like: It links her to her past, the women all before her?” Jaskier asked, scribbling away. “Or is that cliché?” 

Renfri jerked on the both of them, hard enough to actually hurt this time. “Both of you. No more talking. I mean it. Get on your horses, we’re leaving.”

Odessa and Jaskier looked at each other, startled and hurt.

“We’re leaving,” Renfri said quieter again, as if only to herself. “Get on your horses. We’ll camp tonight.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was acciddentally 10,000 words long so I had to do a bit of rearranging. All these timelines are a bit whacky to weave together. Hope you enjoy!

Ciri stumbled into the inn after Master Julian, laughing. He grinned after her, his eyes sparkling as he waited for the timing to tell his next joke. There was already a bard here, his sound thin and watery and both of them ignored the poor music on principle. The rest of the patrons certainly were. It took a moment to realize the man was trying to make his way through Toss A Coin To Your Witcher.

“Two ales!” she said.

“One ale,” Master Julian swept in behind her. “One water with a bit of ale in it. Or tea. Do you have tea? Oh, nevermind the ale then. Two teas hot as you can make them, today we drink like grandmothers!”

“And eggs,” Ciri said. “Do you have any eggs?”

“Eggs?” the barmaid asked, pretty brows furrowing.

“Can’t get them on the road,” Ciri said easily, having heard Master Julian say it enough times. “And yet can’t get enough of them.”

An older woman fussing at the end of the bar popped her head up and hurried over. “Ramina, go check on the patrons.”

“Ma,” the barmaid’s brow furrowed harder. 

“Go check on the patrons,” the woman said again.

With a confused sort of look, Ramina smoothed down her apron and went to circulated the floor.

“I’m am so sorry about the musician, Uncle,” the woman said to Master Julian at once. “I’ll have him out in a thrice. My sister Delia usually plays, but she’s been called off to be an aunt and we’re making due.”

“It’s no worry,” Master Julian told her, all smiles and charm. “He looks the sort who’d move on by nightfall anyway. I don’t know who’s sadder to have him singing, your patrons or him. Still. We all have to start somewhere.”

The woman pressed her lips together for a moment in hesitation. “If you don’t mind me asking, Uncle. I get the aches in my joints and Delia always sings the pain away for me. She uses _Hen on the Nest.”_

“Of course,” Master Julian nodded, “just let me know when.”

Ciri knew _Hen on the Nest,_ Master Julian sang it to her when her feet hurt. It was still a little strange to run into real people who knew about them. Part of her kept suspecting this was all a fairy tale. There weren’t very many, but there were a few people who knew what they were. It seemed like she and Master Julian had traversed the whole of the continent and still only met four humans who were aware of their Songs. It was so odd to go from being outside of Cintra’s terrible secrets not knowing those secrets existed to being inside a secret that was harmless to everyone but herself. The human mind was powerful, it could be convinced to believe anything – that pain wasn’t real or that it should feel happy, or even that friends were monsters.

“You and your hatchling go sit down, Uncle,” the woman said, patting his hands. “We’ll get you some honey and hard-boiled eggs and something nice and warm for the two of you.”

“I’m not a baby,” Ciri grumbled. “I’ve had ale before.”

“And you’ll have it again when you have your own Song,” Uncle said, bumping his shoulder into hers. “Come along, I need to rest my feet. Ever since Odessa and that hellion took Turnip and Parsnip my legs have been threatening to fall off.”

Ciri felt a pang at the mention of the horses. Renfri and Odessa promised they’d drag Cahir on a wild goose and come back safe with the horses in no time. She liked them, and when Renfri said they’d be back safe she believed her. It did make her feel safer to know that cousin Cahir was far away though. “When will Renfri be back? I want to learn how to fight with a sword!”

Master Julian looked uncomfortable. She was painfully aware how much of her education Master Julian controlled. “It’s not usually our way,” he said. “But there’s no rule against fighting. If Renfri is willing, then it will only keep you safer to know how to protect yourself. I’ve already taught you _Hunger’s Knife,_ a real sword can’t be any more dangerous.”

They sat at one of the inn’s long tables to wait for the innkeeper to bring them steaming tea in ale mugs, Ciri eavesdropping for a ballad of her own while Master Julian consulted his map.

There were a couple of men, big and worn and dirty like most of the men one found in inns by the road like this. One of them was bald, brave in this weather, and the other had a great bushy beard. She heard them mention Erlenwald and her whole body seemed to perk up.

She leaned forward on her elbows, “You have news of Cintra?” 

“You from Cintra?” the man asked.

The trick to a lie was to state something true but misleading. “My uncle and I traveled through there recently. I wanted to know if there was any news.”

She could see the way the man suddenly saw her velvet hat and her coat with the fur peeking out the collar. She could see her looking at Master Julian with his strong shoulders under the dark blue of his cloak. She could see him tense up and get angry.

“I apologize for the interruption,” Master Julian said, voice brimming like song and almost edged in steel. “My niece has an orphan’s compassion for other’s suffering. Though it sometimes gets her into trouble I don’t want to crush it, the world does enough of crushing kindness as it is.”

“What does she know of suffering?” the man said.

“She knows that if a bard doesn’t look a certain way she can’t get in certain doors,” Master Julian said. “A bard on the street eats like a beggar. Show him your boots, niece.”

She looked at him, cheeks going red with embarrassment and lifted her foot to the bench so the men could see where Master Julian had wrapped her boots with leather so only the worn toe peeked out. She hadn’t understood why he did it at the time, but now she saw how it made her boots look – like they were barely held together with a prayer and a bit of clever knot work. She tucked her feet back under the table with her cheeks still pink.

“You’re bards?” the man said, voice quieter.

“Julian of Redania,” Julian did a sort of seated bow and brought his lute to his lap. “And his faithful lute, and his longsuffering niece.”

“The two of you are a long way from home,” the man said.

“We were traveling and I wanted to get us away from the front line,” Master Julian said, turning his gaze to look at her in a way that seemed to be more for the bald man than for her. He had a way of talking as if he were telling some kind of secret. “I need to find a town big enough to keep her fed through the worst of the winter.”

The man looked at her and made a wince of understanding. “Sorry about that then, young lady,” he said to her. “I didn’t mean anything by it. My family had the same farm for generations. And now it’s gone, it makes a man unreasonable. It’s an age of madness now.”

Master Julian flinched so hard his lute _blanged._ “Pardon me,” he said, smile tight. “Surely not quite that yet.”

The man gave him a curious look, turning his head back and forth to consider at him. “Hmm. Things are in chaos now there’s no heir to Cintra. The aristocracy has seen fit to bicker amongst themselves instead of helping the people. Those who aren’t struggling for the throne just outright fled.”

“No heir?” Ciri asked.

“Hadn’t you heard? Princess Cirilla was devoured by some monstrous abomination in a river almost a year ago. Nothing left but the rags of her bloody clothes,” the bald man said.

Ciri blinked at him, not knowing what to say.

Eye on Ciri, Master Julian hummed in concern or agreement or something.

She reached out her foot under the table to press her heel against her uncles’ shin. “How sad. That’s tragic news.”

“There’s people saying she’s still alive, but they say that about the queen as well. There will always be that kind of gossip,” the man said

“Won’t there just,” Ciri said. She wasn’t sure how she felt about being dead, but she thought she might like it better than what she thought being alive was. “We’ll say a prayer for her, I’m sure she’s in a better place.”

***

Maia welcomed the three of them with open arms and a soft smile into a huge room of some cuckoo he didn’t know. “My little nephew, my lovely niece! It’s been too long! Come sit by the fire and eat something! You and your friend as well.”

“Mistress Gajos,” Jaskier and Odessa said, mostly out of habit. “Master Ambrose, Master Kuhl.”

“Now, now,” she patted their cheeks and smoothed down their hair. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkling. “You both have your second name now. It’s just Aunt Maia, and your uncles Mak and Lish. You have your own names now, none of that silliness. Let me see the two of you! Look at how grown up you are!”

Mak cleared his throat from where he’d been plucking at his harp. “Not that I don’t appreciate good hospitality, but don’t we have more pressing matters?”

“Quite,” said a voice, almost blank in it’s ringing tone. Uncle Lish rose from his chair looking as bled out and cold eyed as always, the heart shape of his face deceptively sweet. “Is this the young woman who cheated death?”

Lish took slow silent steps toward them, the pale blue of his eyes almost silver, the gold of his hair was trimmed neat – not a strand the wrong length. Renfri had good instincts and pulled out a knife. Where she was getting them all was still a mystery. Even knowing they were safe with Lish, it made him feel better to have Renfri there.

“Now, now,” Lish said – which did not make him any less creepy. “Odessa be a dear.”

Odessa looked at Maia, who’s kind mouth was pressed almost stern, Maia nodded in permission. “It’s alright, Renfri. Lish is my progenitor, the head of my clan. He’s not bad, just-”

“Less obviously human,” Lish finished for her. He pressed a pale hand to his chest, his movements as smooth and elegant as if he were underwater, the angles of his face slightly uncanny. “While a cuckoo breeds true, your little traveling companions have a bit of human blood in them to keep an elf or a witcher from slitting their throat in the night.”

“That was a long time ago,” Odessa said. 

“Wasn’t it just,” Lish purred. “Maia hides it by being sweet and Mak can part his hair different and look like a stranger, unfortunately, I remain as I am. Obvious. The prettiest abomination I know.” Somehow that seemed to have relaxed Renfri, her shoulders easing and her knife disappearing again. “Now my dear, do you mind if we have a little look at you, it’ll take a bit of Singing. Maia might want you to sit by her fire for a month but I have actually things to do and actual curiosity to sate.”

“It’s alright,” Maia said. “There’s plenty of time to talk afterward. Sooner we solve the mystery the better.”

“You might want to cover your ears,” Jaskier whispered to Renfri. “Uncle Lish’s Song can be a bit much for some humans.”

Renfri gritted her teeth. “I’m not human.”

“Very well,” Lish said, “Clear the way, hatchings. Uncle needs a clear view.”

Odessa took one of Renfri’s hands in both of hers and squeezed it before darting back to the side. 

A progenitor's Song was different, purer. There was a moment Lish took in a deep breath, a pause on a pinnacle, a rise of vertigo. It was like the whisper in of air before the last breath. Jaskier cringed back at it, staring at Maia for some comfort in the soft shine of her features. The Song that Lish Sang had no words, barely a melody. It was a fish hook in the gut, the mourning groan of unspeakable feeling. Jaskier clung to his lute. The sound of it hit Renfri like a wave, she gritted her teeth against it, the tendons in her neck standing out. Lish’s body bent over with the Singing of it, his foot stumbled with a hush against the carpet, the Song so mournful and terrible punched out of him in low and rumbling tones and made Renfri brace herself with mortified tears in her eyes. It was a vulture of a song, it ate at the bloated corpse of grief and feasted like a maggot on madness.

The as soon as the sun had darkened with an unspeakable grief, an insufferable chasm of anguish, the Song was over and the room was silent.

Looking back and forth between Renfri and Odessa, he tried to seem calm, tried to send a bit of golden happiness their way to ease the sound still ringing in their ears. It took everything he had to stay in one place as he felt the echo of Lish’s cry inside Renfri’s body. He and Odessa were bouncing in place with an effort not to run to their friend, not to hug her between them and keep her safe there. Renfri’s bottom lip trembled, her eyes shone, but she managed to stay on her feet – poised and terrible.

Lish straightened, his face pale and strained with the power of his Song. “They were right, she was dead. Genuinely. I can feel it in her like the ring of ash in a tree. Odessa’s Song found her in the Valley of Death and fished her back again. I don’t know how she managed it. I don’t recognize how it was done. I can’t catch the melody with my ear.”

The three progenitors counseled with each other. Was it even Odessa and Jaskier at all? Was there some other type of magic? Lish would have recognized necromancy, it left a certain scar in the world. Had Renfri been subject to any Songs? Songs to help her sleep, and a few other silly little tunes.

“Mak?” Lish said, tapping his fingers against his sternum. “You have a better ear than I do.”

Mak straightened his jolly smile a little tense. “Are you ready?” he asked Renfri. “We can wait for a moment?”

“I’ve had enough of listen to you three talk about me, get it over with,” she gritted back.

Nodding, Mak stood in front of her. The elastic jolliness of his face slipped away and the angles weren’t quite right, the planes of his face had been just tilted so in unusual angles. _“The fox runs fast on the moonlight light, the stars above to give him light, it were as though he were in flight. Run fast, run fast, he’s flying. The farmers chase him eight, nine, ten. He’s run away with the great white hen, the greatest love there’s ever been. Run fast, run fast, he’s flying.”_ The Song had the simple ring of a tuning fork, it seemed to gather up inside Renfri and make her ring out in the room.

Renfri jolted sideways, letting out a sudden burst of laughter.

Between Mak’s brows, a furrow formed. He looked troubled.

“It wasn’t the Song itself,” Mak said. “It was Odessa Singing it. I can feel her Song inside the girl, her Voice, keeping the girl alive. Whatever the girl was before, or maybe because of what she was before, Odessa’s Song is reacting with her.”

“That’s not real,” Lish said.

Mak made a kind of shrugging motion that seemed to mean and yet.

“My dear,” Maia said to Renfri, holding out her hands to her. “Renfri's your name, correct?”

“Renfri. The Shrike.” Renfri put her hands in Maia’s one at a time, cautious, which was wise.

“Two names,” Maia said, voice warm. “That’s important to our people. What would you like me to call you?”

“Renfri is fine. I don’t like all this. People making me feel things,” Refri said. “It’s my head, my heart. I want to feel what I feel. I don’t like magic cast on me, I’m impervious to most of it.”

“It’s not really magic,” Maia told her. “Not properly. Magic is just chaos pouring in. What we do is Song, and Song has order to it, meter and rules. We can make you feel scared, or amused, or safe, but we can’t turn you into a bird or catch you on fire, or make you invisible. It’s just feelings. Still, I understand your reticence to be affected. I think the three of us have almost all the information we need.”

“I want to get this over with,” Renfri gritted out.

Maia squeezed her hands with her soft fingers. “You’ve been a great help, there’s not really any more you can help us with. We’ve confirmed you were briefly and regrettably dead, and Mak has the best ear for identifying Songs, so we know if was Odessa who. Whatever peculiarity has occurred we need to examine the other part of the situation. Renfri, can you tell me when you were born?”

“The eclipse. I’m an abomination, a mutant.”

Lish made a thoughtful noise. “Odessa was born on the eclipse too.”

“Odessa,” Maia reached for Jaskier’s cousin. “My dear. Will you come sit with me? Let me Sing to you a little.”

Odessa looked at Maia, then to Jaskier and Renfri. “Alright, Aunt Maia.”

Renfri looked tense, her hands clenched white as bone as Odessa sat down, facing Maia. Jaskier scampered across the floor to lean his shoulder against hers even if that was the only comfort he could give, she looked surprised but didn’t move away. “It’s going to be okay, Aunt Maia taught us both. We know her. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.”

Smiling at Odessa, Maia settled her skirts around her. “You’ve heard my Song before, Odessa. You know you’ve nothing to worry about.”

Odessa nodded, leaning slowly back in the chair and closing her eyes.

Maia took a breath in, her face kind and worried. _“Sweetest morning, on the hilltop, birds are singing welcome to the valley. The homely house stands like the stars above, lasting always like a mother’s love. Come and sit by fire, find your rest, your desires. You’ve a home here, little child dear. Homely house, on the hill.”_

Odessa let out a soft sigh, her body gone loose and relaxed, body almost glowing a soft sort of green. It was good the song relaxed her because she knew now what everyone else in the room did. Something was different in her than in the rest of the people in the room. She wasn’t a cuckoo, not just a cuckoo like them. Something else was part of her now.

“Being born at the eclipse must have altered her somehow, changed her,” Lish said, sounding fascinated. “When she interacted with Renfri it must have unsealed whatever it was inside her. She’s a child of the eclipse as much as a child of the cuckoo.”

Renfri drew her knife, her teeth bared. Over by his harp, Mak blinked in surprise, Lish only looked amused. “All of you get away from her!” She grabbed Odessa by the hand and yanked her up to her feet. Odessa blinked at her, looking sleepy and warm, she lay her head on Renfri’s shoulder and sighed. Eyes wide and teeth bared, Renfri looked like a wild animal. Her knife swayed out in front of her as she backed up with Odessa herded behind her. “Jaskier, grab her lute and get behind me! We’re leaving, and if any of you try to stop us I’m going to strangle you with your own guts! I’m not afraid of you! You touch her and you’re dead.”

Jaskier shifted from foot to foot, hurrying over to pick the lute up and try to balance his own and Odessa’s in his arms. “Um. See you later Aunt Maia?”

“Renfri, it’s alright,” Mak said, hands up. “Whatever else she may be she’s a cuckoo first. A cuckoo always breeds true.”

“I’ll be by to ask you some questions later, Odessa,” Lish waved at her. Odessa smiled and waved back. “A cuckoo who can do real magic. Actual magic. Think of the _possibilities.”_

“You’re not getting anywhere near her,” Renfri snarled.

“It’s okay,” Odessa told her. “Lish wouldn’t hurt me. He’s my progenitor.”

“I wouldn’t,” Lish agreed. “It’s the opportunities this opens up. What she could do!”

“What Odessa could do is what she wants to do. It’s her Song,” Maia said, kind face gone stern. “We’ve never used magic. That’s chaos. We don’t trifle with chaos, it asks too much. Everything is a trade, everything has a cost.”

“Does it?” Lish was looking more and more excited. “Odessa raised someone from the dead with a Song and no sacrifices, nothing withered or burnt down forest. She willed it and it was. It’s never come up before because of what the mages do to their bodies, there’s never been an opportunity to stumble upon something like this. Imagine what we could do with that power! We’d never have to fear anything again!”

“Lish,” Maia stood up. “I’m still the head of the Clans. We have never been involved with chaos and we are not starting now. What happened with Odessa was happenstance, a curiosity that only increases the abilities of an exceptional young cuckoo, but that is it. Cuckoos Sing, we don’t perform magic and we aren’t going to start now.”

Mak rose to his impressive full height, the angles of his face standing through as not quite right. “Maia has spoken, she is first among us and my Clan is in support of her.”

Lish put a hand on his chest and bowed in a weird elvin gesture. “Of course. As you will Maia.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW Series typical violence. This chapter is a bit of a mess, I am not good at fight scenes. The song at the end of the chapter is The Cuckoo Song and is a traditional English ballad.

Sunlight dappled through the leaves as Ciri stood, her brow furrowed at her balalaika. She had liked the shape of it and that the fewer strings meant it was less confusing. She had not anticipated how much she’d have to move her hands. Since they were so close to the Cintra border, Jaskier had left her to practice while he earned a little money and bought them supplies. He’d been hesitant at first, but she’d insisted that since Renfri had given her a lovely dagger and taught her how to use it she was prepared for any eventuality. “The owl-“ she sang and then frowned at the way the notes didn’t sound quite right. “The owl-” Was she not applying enough pressure, were her fingers in the wrong position? There were only three strings, she couldn’t be that far off. “The owl-“

A twig snapped and there was a soldier standing right in front of her, he had on the armor of Nilfgaard dark and twisted. It was fine. It was totally fine. Renfri would have her hair if she knew Ciri had allowed someone to sneak up on her like that.

“H-Hello, sir,” she said, her hand falling off the stem of her instrument to wrap around the dagger at her side. “I don’t want any trouble, I’m but a humble farm girl-”

“I know just who you are Princess Cirilla,” the soldier interrupted her. “We've been looking for you. I knew you were alive! Emerian, come here, it’s Princess Cirilla!”

“You’re mistaken,” she said as firmly as she could, pushing her balalaika behind her. There was a second soldier who had appeared between the trees walking toward her. She swallowed. Renfri said not to show fear, be confident.

“I know it’s you, your portrait has been everywhere. Princess Cirilla, come with me, you won't be hurt. Just turn yourself in nice and easy”

He reached down like he was going to grab her. She paused to take a breath in, feeling the Song raising in her and Screamed. He flew back through the air, his body twisting round and round like a battered thing. The trees in the path of her Scream shattered into splinters that fell in a carpet on the forest floor. She drew her dagger, scrambling to her feet.

She stabbed at the soldier’s face, “Leave me alone!”

“Ciri!” shouted Uncle Julian. His voice sounded distant, but not so far only the wind could carry the sound of it.

“I’m here!” she shouted back. She tried to get the soldier in the waist in what she hoped was a gap in the armor, but her dagger just slid off. She ducked under Emerian’s arm, concentrating on keeping her feet under her. She slashed at the back of his leg and ran for it. The soldier caught her by the arm and spun her around. It hurt where he gripped her arm and shook her. With a snarl she swung her dagger, slicing his ear in two. There was a flash of something to her left and there was Master Julian running, across the surface of the world like a thunderhead.

Master Julian leaped at the soldier, his eyes bared. He took the soldier down to the ground, his face shifted into something not quite human, the angles of his face not quite sitting right. The soldier flailed his arms, shouting. He gripped the soldier by the hair and smashed at his face with a stone. Ciri stared at him.

“Ciri,” he panted. “Did he hurt you?” 

“I’m alright,” Ciri said, feeling tense, almost vibrating like a lute string. “I- He grabbed me but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nothing’s broken.”

Master Julian sighed and dropped the stone. It was splattered red. She looked at it. She thought that she should feel something, that she should react somehow. She felt a bit shivery and a sort of relief.

The soldier, Emerian, surged upward toward Master Julian. She shrieked out a sound of surprise.

Julian made a low sort of melodious sound and took the soldier’s head in both his hands. He banged the soldier’s head against the stone until the man was still in the pulp of his own skull. Master Julian stood with a huff, stumbling back. When he swiped a hand across his face he left a streak of blood there. “Well, if he survives I doubt he’d be able to say much about who he did or didn’t see.”

Ciri hissed breath in and out of her teeth, crouched down against a tree. Her hands burned where she gripped the bark of the tree.

“Ciri, hatchling. Are you alright?” he asked. His long hair was wild, his eyes moved back and forth over her.

She just hissed out her breath and ran to him, wrapping her arms against the warmth of his doublet, the strength of his back. He hummed to her. Sweet Grass in the Meadow, she’d been learning that one. When she could breathe again she said against his chest, “There was another soldier with him. There was a soldier who I Screamed at.”

“That was good, Ciri. You did the right thing. I’m glad you did that. I shouldn’t have left you, we should have moved on. I’m your uncle, I’m supposed to protect you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m alright,” she told him.

He stood up, looking down at the body. “Usually I’d say throw it off a cliff – the least of what he deserves for grabbing you like that.” We can bury him in the snow I suppose. There’s no much of it left, but it will hide the bodies and buy us some time.”

Ciri nodded, now the fight was over she felt a bit odd. There was blood on her dagger, that made her feel a little better. “I would have killed him,” she told Uncle Julian. “Is that wrong?”

“No,” he was busy covering the body of the soldier with snow. “You have different instincts than a human does. Just wait until you’re an aunt. Go grab the other soldier and drag him over.” He looked up at her for a moment, “You’ll be willing to defeat the whole world to keep your hatchling safe.”

Ciri smiled back. She turned, about to make some light-hearted complaint and then- Then-

She cursed. The soldier was gone. “He’s gone,” she said.

Julian moved beside her and cursed. There was the splintered bit of branches and tree trunks. There were the dents in the snow where his body had bounced along the ground, there was blood. There was no body. “No one will believe him, Ciri. No one will believe him.”

“They will,” Ciri said. “They’ll want to. There are people looking for me.”

“Then I’ll kill them too,” Master Julian said like it was that easy. “I’m your uncle. I’m going to be your uncle forever, even when you learn your own Song, even when you find your second name. I’ll kill them myself or I’ll hand you the sword. It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright.”

“It’s going to be alright,” she repeated but didn’t believe. 

“Where did all this fear come from? I didn’t teach you that,” jostled her, his hand smoothing down her hair. “Come on, we’re on foot and they have horses. We need to move. Even if they recognized you they won’t have recognized me. We’re far from Oxenfurt and I’ve been introducing myself as Master Julian for- well – time is an illusion and probably isn’t real, but a while. No one would associate me with Jaskier the bard.”

“Is that your second name?” Ciri asked him. Master Julian’s voice was low and even, part of her wanted to say afraid, it insisted that anything but fear was a lie, but Master Julian’s voice poured out like honey. Up ahead was his lute, dropped in his rush to get to her and the bags of provisions.

For a moment she thought he would say something that sounded wise and philosophical, he just laughed and squeezed her tighter. “Yeah, Jaskier’s my second name. I won’t use it until you find your own name. That’s how it goes.”

She finally pulled back enough to look at him. “You named yourself _Dandelion?”_

He huffed in amusement, so impervious to fear. “Who else is so sunny and endures so well? We’re going to be okay, little one. The cuckoo endures in whatever nest it finds itself.”

***

_“There once was a big old apple tree, biggest apples you ever did see-”_ Jaskier Sang. 

The cluster of village children jumped and ran in a little patch in front of him, their arms and legs swinging in wild waves, singing along with him. _“And the horse said that belongs to me! And the horse went round and round and round and the horse went round and round.”_

He sang them some of the songs Mistress Gajos had taught him and some of his early tries at songwriting. Everyone knew _They All Go Round and Round_ though, it was just one of those songs children just grew up with, he had sung this song three times due to the repeated demand. 

They would pay him nothing of course, but he’d never had a happier audience. He’d realized he was Singing about halfway through, but figured it was harmless. Some parents and a couple of townspeople clustered around as well, drawn in by the golden glow of his beauteous music. Geralt chose that moment to appear with the alderman, jerking to a halt at the sight of the children of the village swinging their skinny limbs through the air.

“It’s good to see the children smiling again,” the alderman said. 

“Figure out what the monster is yet?” Jaskier asked Geralt.

Geralt looked puzzled – and if Jaskier wanted to make a wild bet – actually worried. That wasn’t a great sign.

“It’s not like a monster I’ve heard of before, which means as likely as not that something is wrong with it.” It wasn’t like Geralt to say so much, it made Jaskier’s insides twist up.

“Something wrong like it has a thorn in its paw and it’s been kidnapping people to try to get someone to take it out or something wrong like this drowner has three heads now or something wrong like a curse?” Jaskier asked.

“Hmm,” Geralt said. It was only the gloom of the town that kept Jaskier’s eyes from rolling at the witcher’s answer.

“I’ll go hunting for it tonight. You should have the remaining villagers at a central location where you can defend yourself,” Geralt told the alderman.

“There’s the inn,” the alderman said. “No one’s used it since, the Nowaks went missing.”

Jaskier tried not to be nervous, there was a smell in the air that wasn’t quiet right. Something obscured. He started playing his lute at dusk, nodding to Geralt as he excused himself from the cluster of townsfolk huddling together against the dark. It was like playing for a brick wall. They were all grayed out and tired, stinking of exhausted terror. He gave up on traditional ballads and went for something else entirely. Geralt was gone and would be gone for a while. Surely there would be no danger in Singing.

The smell in the air grew stronger, something bloated and sick mixed with the sharp edge of frost even though it was in the middle of spring. He nodded at the alderman who got up and blocked the door. The tense atmosphere seemed to ease at least the more he Sang, tension and terror going out of shoulder and spines. 

_“This is the place my heart will know, where sweet grass in the meadow grows,”_ Julian finished. The villagers, so few now they could all fit in the tavern were quiet. There was still a sort of gray in the air that was all fog and cobwebs, through it was a honey gold glow of happiness, of sweet memories.

“Another,” said a voice from the crowd, no louder than a normal speaking voice, but everyone seemed to jolt at it anyway.

Maybe it was time to bring out the big crossbow, metaphorically speaking of course. His fingers plucked with care, back and forth, plinking and plucking. _“Honey moon so heavy in the starlight, sweetness on my tongue of precious memory. Standing in the meadow full of flowers, feeling all the power of the world around me making welcome. Oh shine on for me, honey moon. Shine on like yesterday-”_

It wasn’t really encouraged to just go around singing old Songs, but none of these people looked like they had enough musical training to reproduce it anyway. The night of singing with the faint glow of gold in the air was a salve on a tumor. Relief without a cure. The real cure was at the edge of Geralt’s sword. He’d sung almost to midnight and Geralt still wasn’t back yet. He looked at the people, he didn’t think even his Singing could do them much good, he’d filled up as much space was left in their cups and now it was just the extra pouring over onto the ground and they’d fed him about all they were able. 

“I can’t sing anymore,” he told them. It was a bit of a sad indicator of affairs that they all nodded at him and filed out into the night.

He slumped down on the table, his head in his hands. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt this kind of powerless before. His Songs could convince a body it should heal itself, or that tears should give way to laughter, or that someone was a friend to humanity – but that was his limit. He couldn’t change things from what they were. Persistently dire. Odessa was the only one he knew who could do anything like that, even the progenitors with their prodigious powers hadn’t risen to those heights. He just- He just felt helpless.

There were footfalls coming closer; padding little steps, soft and playful.

“I’m done singing for tonight,” he told the table.

“That’s too bad,” purred a low rumbling voice, a Song without being Sung. 

Jaskier’s eyes flew open and he jolted up.

There was a man in front of him and he was a cuckoo. Only he wasn’t a cuckoo. There was something wrong with him, he’d hatched not quite right. And his smell. It wasn’t- It was only obvious up close, but the man smelled rotted somehow. Like the hatching hadn’t quite took.

“What an interesting song,” the man said, his smile was like cream– sweet and bright. The man’s eyes are ice blue and his hair almost blond-white; his cheeks are plump with care and his furs hide the whipcord strength of him. The man was pretty and soft and dangerous.

Jaskier was in danger. If he could smell the – the thing then the thing could smell him. Jaskier hadn’t been able to feed enough from the townsfolk – there wasn’t enough happiness to go around. His Hunger had been kept in tight control, as all cuckoos should do.

“Maia is my aunt,” Jaskier said the words tripping off his tongue. He groped for his lute, he wasn’t going down unarmed. “She trained me.”

The cuckoo mimed looking around him for longer than was really necessary, “She’s not here, is she? I don’t know her, is she special?”

It was such a casual disrespect of Maia, he picked a knife up from the table and jammed it down into the cuckoo’s hand. He tried to pull it out and stab the cuckoo again, somewhere more useful, but Jaskier had jammed the blade in too far and it was stuck in the wood. He did what he could and retreated to look for more cutlery. Unfortunately, whatever the cuckoo was mixed up in, it pulled the bloody knife off of the table and threw it into Jaskier’s thigh.

“Unfortunate,” Jaskier said very quickly and sat down. The villagers were too far away, and who knew what part of the dark and ominous woods Geralt was stalking through. Was he supposed to take a knife out or not? He couldn’t remember, and since touching it hurt he decided to just leave it in for now.

Jaskier tried to subtly align his fingers on the strings just as the cuckoo took a deep breath in, _“Like falling snow the owl goes, their wings more silent than the frost,”_ Jaskier Sang over him, his voice hovering hushed between them. _“Whisper soft they fly by moonlight, lulling me to slumber.”_ Jaskier pictured in his mind the soft beat of the owl’s wing, something gauzy and dreamlike and silent.

The cuckoo’s mouth hung open and quiet, his body relaxing as if he’d forgotten what he was doing.

Hissing out a wrench of pain, Jaskier leapt from the bench ran like a husband was after him. He needed to get out of here, get to Geralt. But he couldn’t, what if the witcher learned about cuckoos? What if they were hunted again?

Behind him, there was an inhale that Jaskier could feel in his bones, feel in his gut, in the popping of his ears. “No, no, no,” his fingers fumbled for the strings.

The cuckoo Screamed. For a moment the whole world was white, there was a pain Jaskier didn’t know he could feel dwarfing even the sensation of running with a knife in. He’d never heard a cuckoo scream before, the closest he ever heard was Lish’s terrible grief moan. The lute fell from his numb fingers was the only thing that saved it from being crushed between his body and the wall of the inn. His wrist went with a snap. Jaskier was well aware that when his head stopped screaming back that he was going to hurt a lot.

In a distant sense he was aware of a stinging pain all over his body. Blinking with numb and unfocused eyes, Jaskier looked at the pile of a table’s worth of splinters around him. Breathing through the shock that at least protected him from the pain he searched for his lute with bloody hands.

If he let himself think about it, Jaskier hadn’t been- He hadn’t been this terrified since he was young. The cuckoo’s Song was all wrong, it was a cold knife in the dark, a pinching twist of fingers from a friend, a cold word from a lover that would never have an apology. Splinters of wood sunk into the back of his hands and face. Instinct flickered weak in his chest, he was going to be killed if he didn’t do something. 

No, he thought as he looked at the cold fire burning in the cuckoo’s uncanny face. He wouldn’t be killed, he would be devoured. Frigid sadism glowed from the wretched creatures’ pale face. The cuckoo was going to Scream and fill him with pain and terror and then suck up the juices of him. He could hear Mistress Gajos’ voice rising up from the past, _Sing, Sing!_

Around him, the air went still as the creature inhaled. All Jaskier could do was put his fingers on the strings and try to play something in his own defense as a Scream hit him again. Whatever that unholy Song was it was blocked somewhat why the beginning notes of _Toss A Coin to Your Witcher._ The euphoria of not being torn to shreds was diminished by the way Jaskier’s head cracked back against the wall of the inn, his head rung and his hands turned to jelly.

Sing, his last thread of self-preservation screamed at him. _Sing!_

“I’ve never eaten one of you before. What are you? You smell so lovely and strange,” the wrong-hatched thing trilled. “Like honey.”

It doesn’t even know what I am, Jaskier thought. It doesn’t even know what it is. It’s never had an aunt or uncle. It’s never found its own name, its own Song.

“You’re so full of Pain,” it purred at him, its pretty face contorted into something that didn’t even pretend to be human. It was so close he could count its pointed teeth, smell its awful breath. He drew the knife from his thigh and shoved it into the creature’s chest.

_“The sunlight dapples gold and bright, a meadow stretches hill to hill,”_ Jaskier warbled. The creature made a garbled sound and sprung back from him. _“The valley’s bright with gold tonight with d-dandelions and daffodils. The buttercup is all full up with nectar sweet as summer wine, the sun is shining everywhere with daffodils and dandelions.”_

“Shut up!” it screeched. “Shut up! What’s that sound!”

_“The honey moon so heavy hangs and drips its sweetness to the earth,”_ he Sang, his head spinning round and round. _“The flowers sup, the buttercups, the dandelions and daffodils.”_

The door of the inn crashed open, and there was Geralt in all his gloomy glory with townsfolk behind him.

“Thank the gods,” Jaskier moaned.

The creature hunched was against the wall, squinting against Jaskier’s song. It looked so confused and hurt, there was recognition in its eyes. It reached out for him as if it had just figured out itself as if it had just figured out the world. And Jaskier- Jaskier-

And then there was an ax in its neck with a villager standing over it. The village kept screaming about their daughter and chopping the poor thing to bits and Jaskier kept staring and gasping in big lungfuls of air. He was sobbing and sobbing without even the release of crying and he couldn’t stop. 

Geralt didn’t seem to know what to do with him so one of the townspeople took him upstairs to bandage him and leave him to shake apart in privacy. He woke in the night to Geralt settling into a chair by his bed and stirred.

“I need to go see Odessa,” he told Geralt.

“I don’t know who that is,” the man rumbled back. 

“We grew up together. She’s family. I need to go see her.”

Geralt made a sort of growling sound. “You’re not fit to travel.”

“You don’t have to go with me,” Jaskier told him. “I can find her. We can always find each other.”

“Go to sleep, we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

In the morning Geralt slapped him on the shoulder and introduced him to two horses, Turnip and Parsnip who’s owners had disappeared into the night at some point and who were some sort of horse married. One would not go without the other. Geralt didn’t ask why Jaskier needed to go see Odessa, didn’t say anything. It hurt that Jaskier’s wrist had been broken, that he couldn’t play his lute. The need to play it was like a thorn under his skin.

He wanted to tell Geralt, that little creature didn’t know what it was. It fed on pain and terror but had never been taught how to do it. Everything that happened was because the poor thing hatched wrong and all it knew to do was feed on pain. The pain of a sieged city and the suffering of an isolated people. Instead, he saw the swing of the ax and held his tongue. Instead, he saw the creature’s pretty little head roll across the floor behind his eyes. It hadn’t even known what it was.

Jaskier had woken up so unbearably Hungry and unbearably tired.

He was quiet until he headed out of the village riding side by side with Geralt. He held his lute with his good hand just for the comfort of it, _“The cuckoo is a fine bird he sings as he flies - He brings us good tidings and tells us no lies. He sucks the sweet flowers to make his voice clear - And the more he cries cuckoo, the summer is nigh.”_

His voice sounded like an old door and his heart like an empty room.


	6. Chapter 6

_“Hey ho sang the fox in the meadow!”_ Odessa Sang from the floor of the inn, she swaggered in and out of the tables. _“He tipped his hat at the old brown hen. Hey ho sang the fox in the meadow!”_ He wasn’t sure where Renfri was at first, but then he was sure she was lurking around. Odessa’s performances were always loud and rowdy, she’d always been excellent at working up a crowd. Usually he was filled with glee, stomping along with her adoring fans, but he needed to warn Renfri. However long it took to put away three horses, two of which literally started dying if they couldn’t stare at each other with their stupid horse face, probably wasn’t as long as he hoped.

He hopped between the tavern patrons, singing and clapping along. He’d know the slant of her shoulders anyway, the way she always seemed to be leaning forward as though she had a secret to tell. Distress had begun to pluck him like harp when strong hands took him by the waist and cozied him back onto a bench.

Renfri smiled at him; her smile slow and sardonic, but more relaxed around the edges. He had been just about pulled him into her lap and shifted so his weight wouldn’t be uncomfortable for her. Renfri wasn’t soft, wasn’t the sort of a woman to become soft, but he wanted the world to be soft for her – how many times had she protected them, laughed at their jokes, clapped along to their songs. He put his arm around her neck and pressed his lips to her cheek out of habit. She smelled overwhelmingly like Odessa which was new but not surprising. “Fairest Renfri, shrike of justice.”

“Sweet one,” she said, squeezing his waist before her eyes narrowed. He knew he didn’t look good. “You've been hurt.”

“Geralt of Rivia is here, he’s on his way. You need to get upstairs,” he told her.

Her eyes widened then narrowed.

Julian squeezed her shoulder, “I fine, get upstairs.”

Her arm squeezed around his waist and then she was gone, slipping through the crowd like a shadow. Odessa had two more songs, he was familiar enough with her set, and the last thing he wanted to do was distract her. If she’d seen him she’d seen if, if not than he’d wait. He wasn’t going to get any more broken than he already was. She’d just begun The Lady Blacksmith and had the tavern howling with delight and laughter when Geralt entered the inn, wincing. All the good cheer was probably a bit much for his witcher ears.

Hurrying over, Jaskier shouldered his way over before the witcher could get in trouble. Leaning close, Jaskier nodded at the stage. “That’s Odessa, she’s the bard.”

“Your shows aren’t like this,” Geralt said into his ear.

Jaskier gave him a look. “I’m just getting started. And Odessa is incredibly good.”

Odessa had reached the part of the song with the anvil and the crowd roared. Geralt made that wincing face of his where everything just closed down tight, rocking back at the sound.

When Geralt opened his eyes again, Jaskier continued. “The shows almost over, it’ll still be noisy for a while.” There are always those who propositioned her and then those who just liked her music.

“Can we wait upstairs?” Geralt asked.

“That might be better,” Jaskier admitted.

“That’s all for tonight!” Odessa called from the stage then plucked a few notes and Sang. “I won’t be chatting tonight, talk among yourselves. You can talk to me tomorrow!”

She pranced off the stage in a flair of long yellow sleeves, the crowd parted for her in a soft rumble of excited talking. With a deep breath, he braced himself a little, “Jaskier! You look like something the cat dragged in, what in the world happened to you?”

Her eyes fell upon Geralt and something in her gaze softened. She patted the witcher on the arm, smile relaxing into something a little more real. “And you’re Geralt. I imagine you’re the reason he only looks torn up and not torn to pieces. I’d buy you a drink, but you look like you’re a bit uncomfortable here.” She went up on her toes to lean across the bar, “Polly! Room and a bottle of wine! No, two bottles!”

Polly looked over from where she was helping her parents and nodded with wide harried eyes. For a moment she fumbled with her hands, overwhelmed by the crush and then thrust a key and the bottles at them. 

“One for you,” she told Geralt, handing him a bottle. “One for you,” she said to Jaskier, handing him the key. “And one to share if you two are nice enough,” she said, waggling the last bottle at them. “Come on, let’s head upstairs. Tell Aunt Odessa what the trouble is.”

With an easy jostling, Odessa managed to get Jaskier in front of her with her body protecting the lute on his back, with her behind him and Geralt taking up the rear. She pushed his lute to the side with her free hand so for a moment they were walking almost back to front. “What’s going on?”

Whatever look he gave her it made Odessa press her lips together in a flat worried line. They needed to talk privately, but Geralt needed to be taken care of first. Her performance face on, she hurried them both into their room chatting and encouraging Geralt to drink in all the subtle ways that Jaskier was sure the witcher wasn’t catching on. Jaskier was her cousin and he was barely catching on. She chattered and laughed and played him silly little tunes until both of them could dump the witcher in bed.

“That took forever,” Odessa griped from where she was tugging Geralt’s left boot off. “Two bottles of the stuff and my Singing, which has remained exemplary I might add. He has the resistance of a brick house.”

“He is a witcher,” Jaskier told her.

She grunted as the left boot came off but was able to keep her footing. “He is sleeping with one boot on, you’re in no shape and I’m not doing that again.” 

Jaskier covered him to the waist with the blanket so he wouldn’t overheat and hovered with worry at the edge of the bed.

“So, cousin,” she said, hands on her hips. She was sweaty from performing and her voice had begun to go a little raspy. He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tight.

“I almost died,” he said.

“Oh, honey,” she said, her musician fingers smoothing down his hair.

“It was another cuckoo,” he told her. His hands were on her back and her arms were around his neck so that he could feel the moment a change came over her. The feeling of her back and her shoulders and her neck and her arms tensing was like feeling some monstrous creature crawl its way to the surface. The pit of his stomach turned bitter and rotten and his spine tightened up as though preparing him to flee.

“No cuckoo has ever attacked another cuckoo knowingly,” she whispered. Her hands kept flexing into claws against his back. “Although now it’s been done once, might as well be done a second time. Where are they?”

“A villager chopped them up with their ax,” he told her. “And there has been a cuckoo that has attacked another cuckoo before. Lish and Maia have fought.”

She took in a breath. “Lish has poor impulse control and Maia stopped him,” Odessa said. “Lish has attacked Maia, and elves, and humans.”

Geralt made a soft exhale in his sleep that was enough to split up their hug. Odessa jumped back to grab Jaskier by the arm and drag him to the door. “Renfri needs to know about this.”

“You and Renfri?” he asked in the hall as a way to cut the tension that seemed to be choking him.

“I like her,” Odessa affirmed, her voice distant in that head too full of thoughts way. “I don’t know. We haven’t decided what we are. I just like her a lot. I want to be her best friend. She said she didn’t want to be anything more if I place hatchlings with other people.”

Jaskier’s brow furrowed. “But she doesn’t have a spouse, does she want you to give her a hatchling?”

Odessa looked over her shoulder to raise her eyebrows at him.

“Oh. _Oh._ Yeah, humans are- Humans do things differently.” Jaskier stopped. He didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Renfri. He also felt a little weird saying the word sex in front of his cousin in the hall of a strange tavern. It occurred Odessa might feel the same way. “Are you going to stop… _placing hatchlings_ because she doesn’t want you to?”

Odessa turned her head and wouldn’t look at him, her hand tightening and loosening on his arm. “I mean I don’t have to, you know. It’s not required to live. And I- I feel weird with my hatchlings. I never know if they’ll end up able to Sing like me. I’ve had a couple and Renfri was really odd about both of them. I just-” she shrugged. “She had a hard time understanding I wasn’t their mother. It was confusing for her.”

“If you don’t want to place hatchlings I don’t think you should,” Jaskier told her quickly, the words leapfrogging over each other. “I mean, maybe you’ll see a good steady couple and their nice house and you might consider if they’d make a good home for a hatchling, but that’s just _instinct._ It’s just natural. You don’t have to act on every instinct that flashes through your mind.” He paused to look at her thoughtful face. “Renfri’s really wonderful. She always smells good and she’s really strong.”

“Renfri does smell good,” Odessa said, looking thoughtful. “Enough about me.”

When they opened the door of their room, Renfri was sitting on the bed with their bags packed beside her.

“Oh Renfri,” Odessa gushed. And yeah, Jaskier thought, she wouldn’t be placing any more hatchlings until after Renfri died. “You packed up in case we had to flee into the night!” She threw her arms around Renfri’s shoulders, one hand holding onto some kind of cloak pin on her shoulder and pressed a cheek to her hair.

“Do we need to?” Renfri asked. 

“No,” Jaskier said. “There’s not immediate danger. But we’re going to have to leave in the morning.”

Renfri leaned forward, and Jaskier tried not to grin at the cloak pin Odessa was holding onto, the circle appeared to be some kind of snake in its death agony and at the stick appeared to be some kind of shrike driving a thorn into it. He tried to not smile in front of the terrible news he had to deliver. She was not the sort of woman to go commission intricate jewelry, he could rather guess who that was from. He pulled over a chair so he could face them. “Go on then. Faster we know what did that to you the faster we can find a solution.”

He told them about the village with the people who went missing, farmers and children first and then people closer to town. He told them how someone had hired Geralt and the sense of dread in the village. He told them about the pretty little creature with its terrible scream, how it hadn’t seemed to know what it was. “It was- It was hatched wrong, it smelled rotten. Like there were parts of it that hadn’t been able to fully form and turned to mush inside it. Most of all, it wasn’t a normal cuckoo. It threw me around the room with its voice like it was nothing.”

Brow furrowed, Renfri considered him. “Cuckoos can’t do magic, not except Odessa, but that was only because of the eclipse.” She turned to look at Odessa. “Could it have been one of your hatchlings?”

“I’ve only had the two. It’s not easy to pass a child off as a twin,” Odessa told her. “The timing has to be perfect and there needs to be the right midwife. I’ve only placed the two and you were there for both of them.”

“They’re both far to young do that sort of thing. So someone else had a little hybrid,” Renfri said, looking thoughtful. “Have the two of you ever heard of something like this before?”

Jaskier shrugged. “We’re young. Maia will meet with us right away and she’s older than the conjunction. As far as I know, Odessa is the first cuckoo that can do magic. The cuckoo breeds true though, this shouldn’t happen.”

Odessa sat up, crossing her legs on the bed. “We’ll tell your witcher you need time to recover in the morning and then we’ll leave for Maia right away. Whatever this thing is, I know we can figure it out together.”

Jaskier wrapped his arms around them, kissing them on the cheeks and foreheads and the crown of their heads until Odessa laughed and Renfri snorted out a pleased sound.

***

Geralt felt clenched like a fist. He’d felt that way for almost two years now, his bones aching with the tension of it. First to have been… unaccustomed to quiet travel after Jaskier disappeared off the mountain, then to have believed he failed his child surprise, that she died some terrible bloody death and then to discover she was alive and traveling with _Jaskier_ of all people. He had a number of questions, not least of which was the question he had for himself concerning whether he should be furious or thankful. He certainly had a word or two for Jaskier concerning the blue-eyed children of various ages he’d bumped into trying to retrace the bard’s steps. He knew better than to start trouble in homes that appeared happy. The closest he came to making trouble was when he insisted to a woman that she at least admit she had known the bard and had been thrown out of the house by a tutor. The man had been awful strong for a tutor, but then what did Geralt know of such things?

He didn’t know where else to look, he asked around in every village and had pulled at every string but one.

Odessa.

Thank the gods he’d only had to cross paths with the woman twice. If Jaskier was bad she was a horror. Bossy and ferocious and far too fussy. The first time they’d met she somehow got him and drunk and the second time she’d chattered about everything in the world there was to talk about and then invented some new things. The two of them hadn’t said what their relation to each was outright. From where they had huddled together eating boiled eggs and laughing at each other’s antics, Geralt could certainly gather that Odessa was Jaskier’s older sister. If the way they had interacted with each other was any indication, she would know exactly where it was.

She performed a great deal of what Jaskier had assured him were _love songs in minor key_ as if that meant anything to Geralt and she hadn’t been – at the time – singing bawdy ballads about lady blacksmiths. Geralt had learned in his travels the way a bard made money. There was a set of songs and they were shuffled like cards by some criteria Jaskier was able to immediately identify but alluded Geralt. Asking after a lady bard who wore britches was not quite effective as he hoped, apparently she had a traveling companion who didn’t think anyone had need of knowing where Odessa was unless she was performing. After a month of bribes and intimidation, he ended up at The Old Blue Flower where the innkeeper identified she was upstairs. 

He considered arming himself, but that was as likely or not just to make her more aggressive. He had a lot of respect for the sort of woman who could make a living as a traveling bard and still maintain a companionable disposition. That respect made her no less aggressive. Geralt took a deep breath and knocked.

“Who is it?” the woman sang out and Geralt was immediately assaulted with the sort of tension that usually meant something in the bushes was going to try to eat him. There was something about Odessa that set off his instincts, something about both of them. It must have been the relentless cheer that made him feel hunted.

 _“Geralt of Rivia,”_ he answered automatically. 

“Geralt of Rivia!” her voice went from velvet to steel and there was rapid movement in the room. _“Why are you here?”_

“To find Jaskier.” There were hissed whispers on the other side of the room he couldn’t make out.

“Well, he’s not here so go away,” Odessa shouted through the door. “I don’t want to talk to you!”

“I just want to talk for a moment!” Geralt shouted.

“Talk to yourself! We’re not on speaking terms you cod faced cur!”

“Well, we’re going to talk! Do you know how hard it was to track you down!” he shouted back. She just made him so angry so quickly.

“Not at hard as I’m going to kick your balls in, Geralt, I can tell you that!” she shouted back.

An older man approached up the stairs, blinking at Geralt at the door, his wrinkled face crinkling up in a kind of winking sympathy.

“Lover’s quarrel?”

Geralt tried not to groan.

“I’m sorry son, I don’t mean to be talking out of turn but you may be barking up the wrong tree.” He used an old key to open the room next door. Someone was in the room with Odessa, if she wouldn’t be helpful. Maybe the old man would be of some assistance. If she was hiding her brother in her room then there’s no way Jaskier would go unheard through the wall – Geralt had shared what seemed a lifetime of inn rooms with Jaskier - other patrons banging on the walls was painfully common.

“Have you happened to hear a man’s voice in her room?” Geralt asked him.

The old man’s eyes filled with sympathy, they were so pitying Geralt felt like he should start shouting about something, but wasn’t sure what.

“Oh son, I’m sorry. Harold, is it? I don’t think it’s going to work between the two of you. I once courted a young woman who was best friends with a milkmaid-” 

Geralt politely said, “Thank you, sir.” Then kicked the door of Odessa’s room open. 

It bounced open once to show Odessa’s wide surprised eyes and someone hunched at the window, then bounced back closed again. He pushed the door against the wall and charged in to see the violent movement of Odessa’s arm and the bottoms of some boots as they disappeared over the sill.

“Did you just push someone out the window?” Geralt’s brows furrowed.

She shrugged, lounging in the window frame so she just about blocked it, “Don’t worry about it.”

He wished she wouldn’t stand like that, the sunlight allowed him to see more of her body than he wanted through the soft material of her robe. It made him feel weird and uncomfortable.

“So, Geralt, you amazing shoe-scraping. Welcome to my room,” Odessa gestured at the room at large. It stunk of rosewater, he couldn’t smell anything over it. There were pretty little bundles of herbs tied up with silk ribbons. He recognized them: chamomile, lavender, valerian.

“Guilty conscious making it hard to sleep?” he prodded at her.

“How well have you been sleeping without my brother singing you lullabies? The nightmares keeping you awake without someone to smooth back your hair and whisper to you about the honey moon?” she snapped back.

He- He hadn’t been sleeping as well, but that was because he had been traveling so hard. He didn’t know what she was talking about as far as the honey moon went… except he did. Somewhere folded in with the rest of his memory was- was a great golden moon like a honey comb and the honey from it made one happy and made one feel loved. He’d never seen it, never been under its glow, but he could feel the echo of it now like a childhood memory. Standing in a valley of daffodils and dandelions, looking up at the honey moon and knowing that if nowhere else, here he was safe. There was grief attached to the hidden memory now, and deep guilt.

“Someone’s repressed,” Odessa said and threw herself down to lounge languid on the upturned covers of her bed. She gave him the sort of look over that made him feel shrunken down even though she was about half his size, then pulled her lute into her lap. “What do you want with my brother? Here to abandon him like a puppy on another deadly mountain? Want to blame him for something else you did wrong? How about you just cut his throat next time, might be kinder.”

Geralt felt his teeth grit together. He knew he hadn’t behaved well, and by the way she barely spared him a glance she knew he knew too. There was no need for her to sink her claws so deep into him. Except he thought of the way Jaskier had smiled when he called Geralt his friend and thought maybe he did a little. It couldn’t have been easy to be big sister to someone like Jaskier who was one big request to be punched in the face walking around in a world full of fists.

“I need to find Jaskier,” he told her, willing to take barbs for Ciri’s sake if nothing else. “He’s traveling with Princess Cirilla. She’s my Child Surprise and I need to find her.”

“I thought she was dead,” Odessa drawled, and suddenly Geralt knew the child was very much alive and that the woman very much knew it.

He almost took a sharp inhale but stopped himself. Jaskier didn’t care about him being a witcher – other than it being a business opportunity, and Odessa didn’t either. They were the only two people alive who didn’t care. This wasn’t about him being a witcher. This was about him. “We can negotiate. What do you want for the information? A promise, a job, a potion?”

She looked him dead in the eye. “I love Jaskier and you hurt him. I want you to suffer.”

That was… expected given his experience with her. While something in him seemed to avoid thinking of her as violent there was something about her anger that suggested slightly the reason she hadn’t been arrested was because they hadn’t found the bodies. He thought of the way Jaskier had casually wished for the death of someone at the first opportunity. Two peas in a pod those two.

“Odessa, this isn’t about your brother,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “I have a Child Surprise. I need to protect her. I knew she’s traveling with your brother if you don’t know where they are you know how I can find them. Jaskier can’t take care of her on his own.”

She finally stopped strumming to look up at him. “Jaskier is taking care of her very well actually. She is happy and well-tended to, her socks are darned and her step is light. You’ve spent most of the last twenty years thinking of them both as problems to be avoided, congratulations, you’ve avoided them. Two birds with one stone, you can be on your way.”

Geralt felt angry, so angry. He didn’t even need to look at her to know that nothing he could say would hurt her. She barely bothered to look at him out of the corner of her eye as if he were a rat, palm-sized to be hocked out the window with whoever she sent on his way. He took a breath and knelt down and meditated.

He needed to treat this like a hunt, separate things out, sort through his feelings and discard the feelings that weren’t useful. 

When his eyes opened again it was dark out and she had changed into something red and frivolous with those puffy sleeves Jaskier sometimes wore and breeches to match. Other than that she was still on the bed, playing a tune that Geralt vaguely recognized. He sighed out.

He told her “I have failed both of them because of my pride and I want to try to make it up by doing the only thing I can and protecting them.” 

To her credit, she actually seemed to be listening to him. He wasn’t sure he would have bothered waiting and listening in this situation or if he would have just left.

“Thank you for waiting,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to hate you for treating him that way, but you are trying to change. I believe in change,” her voice was not unkind, but stern. She reminded him of Vesemir somehow. “You are capable of more, I expect you more than almost anyone around me to be the more you’re capable of.”

“Hmm,” he told her.

“I know my brother, and Ciri - more than you do,” she sat up, cross-legged, her dark messy braid hanging down her shoulder. “Every adult authority figure in Ciri’s old life disappointed or hurt her in some way. They lied to her, kept her from people who loved her, took actions that led to the overthrow of their government. If I tell you where Ciri and Jaskier are and you save her by the sword, but break her heart then I will have been doing her a great cruelty.”

Geralt took a deep breath and let it out through his nose.

“Even now you’re making an almost stranger who hates you drag around your big dumb, constipated emotions for you instead of actually looking at yourself and thinking about why you did what you did,” Odessa’s fingers strummed those weird _planging_ sounds of hers. Like music gone backward. “No one is ever going to love you more than Jaskier. Not in your whole too long life. I’m not talking about sex, frankly I could care less if or when you banged like pots and pans. No one is capable of loving you as profoundly as Jaskier is, his love is different than what you can find from people. You traveled with that big open heart for ten years and felt how fond he was, how important you were to him just by virtue of your being alive and you hurt him in the only way you could just because you could. Because you were mad you didn’t get to explore the skirts of some lady. Why would I tell you how to find a traumatized girl?”

Geralt stood up, his hands clenching for something familiar. The handles of his swords or a potion or a stone to crack his own head with. “I hurt Jaskier because everyone else had left me or treated me like a curiosity or a monster. Jaskier didn’t and so I wanted to leave because if I didn’t make him leave and he left on his own then that means there is something wrong with me. And I didn’t want there to be something wrong with me. I wanted everyone else to be wrong.”

Odessa strummed a few doleful cords, just letting him talk. He thought it was a shame they couldn’t be friends. He might have liked to have someone like her as a friend. There wasn’t a single situation he could imagine her wrong-footed in.

“How’s that working out for you?” she asked.

It already felt like someone had pry barred that out of him, he didn’t want to add to it. But then he thought of Ciri and of Jaskier. He hadn’t known what Jaskier wanted. For years he hadn’t known, and then in the way of things he had figured it out the first time he woke for a nightmare and there wasn’t someone there already singing some low, soft lullaby. He was meant to be a witcher and he hadn’t figured it out when he couldn’t sleep after he and Jaskier had split ways after the Child Surprise.

“I miss Jaskier,” he said. “And I want to be good for Ciri. I need to apologize to them both.”

“Fine,” Odessa groaned. “I need to play for my room tonight and we’ll talk in the morning. Myself and my traveling companion are actually setting off tomorrow to go meet him. Word of advice though. You’ll do much better in the future if you don’t make others unpack your luggage for you. They’re your feelings, your responsibility.”

“Hmm,” he replied. “I owe you.”

“Don’t you just,” she said and flounced past him. There was a familiar scent on her under the rose water that tugged on his memory before he could place it, she was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Maia’s voice had lost all its sweet cajoling and had claws to it now. _”Pavetta?_ Princess _Pavetta?”_

Lish lounged back in his chair by the fire, eyes half-lidded. “Yes,” he said. “Princess Pavetta. I placed her there myself.”

“She is almost full grown and has not been given an aunt or an uncle, what were you thinking?” Maia rumbled at him.

Jaskier wanted to take Odessa’s hand but didn’t want to show weakness in front of Lish.

“I was her uncle of course,” Lish said, stretching out to preen.

A sort of dark glow had begun in the room. “All teaching assignments go through the counsel. And they are never the cuckoo who planted the egg.”

“You’re such a hypocrite,” Lish folded forward at a wretched angle. “You make exceptions for everyone and everything. I’m on the council, I’m a progenitor, I decided to be her uncle!”

Maia’s Sang something in an old language that Jaskier knew the meaning of if not the translation. The Song was taught to everyone who became an aunt or uncle, but it was only Sung by the progenitors. The sound of it made Lish’s eyes go wide with fury, made him spring up to sit flat-backed and tense in his chair. Maia's Song had put rage and fear in the progenitor’s eyes, Jaskier felt his fists clench. Whatever the result of the song would be if would have to be found today – Lish would not stand for anything else. 

“How dare you,” he hissed. “You would call me to judgment.” 

“There are three of us,” Maia gestured. “That’s all that required.”

“They’re both so young,” Lish told her.

Aunt Maia simply ignored his complaint. “Why Pavetta? Why Queen Calanthe’s child?” Maia asked. “I hesitate to accuse you of the unrest that kingdom has caused. Tell me what your plan was and we may be able to end things peaceably again. I have had mercy on your wrongdoing before. We came through the conjunction together Lish, we are in this situation together. I have made more exceptions for you than for anyone, all I need is an excuse to do so.”

Lish let in a breath and then out again. “Your Song may have adapted to this place, may have made it a home, but I still grieve for the world that was. I still long for the smell on flowers on the breeze that this world will never know and the lines of mountain ranges that this world will never see. I hate it here. We place our eggs with the gnomes then the elves kill the gnomes, we place our eggs with the elves then the humans kill the elves, if monsters are to inherit this world, why not embrace it!”

Odessa was tensing, Renfri drifting sideways to stand behind Maia.

“Odessa was the first, a cuckoo with real power! More than the power to convince someone with a song about bluebirds. The power to fold people under the heel. I needed to try again, see what worked. Calanthe was perfect, she carried magical blood in her, any child of her womb would have that same chance of power. Do you know what I could do with a sovereign that could sing away the wills of their enemies? That could Sing down thunder and lightning? Calanthe’s will was so strong, I tried every which way to break her and she resisted everything, except being told she was right, except being given a sword and told it would cure all her ills. After that the egg was easy. I’m going to make her a weapon this world has never seen before. Cuckoos aren’t going to live hungry anymore, we’re going to glut ourselves on the peoples who forced us to sing for our supper and sneak in the shadows. Our hatchlings won’t be slain as changelings, we can place eggs as we will.”

Jaskier had already been drifting back out of range of Maia, Odessa and Renfri had been doing so as well. There was a sick sort of throb in Jaskier’s stomach. “An egg must be placed in a loving home,” Jaskier said. “With parents who will love and nurture the hatchling. Subjugation will not make parents love their cuckoo more.”

Lish leaned forward, “Don’t tell me how things are, hatchling. I’ve seen more hatchlings dashed against the stone by their loving parents than you’ve seen in your life. With real power, we can make anyone feel what we want. We can plant hatchlings and then raise them ourselves if we want to do so. All we need is a small population, just enough for them to survive. We can keep Cintra and just kill everyone else. Pavetta can keep her little home and we can prosper.”

“I make my vote in judgment,” Odessa said, chin lifted. “I claim right to do so as he’s my progenitor. He has polluted his Song and gone against the counsel’s edicts. I want him under the heel of justice, since he’s so determined to have something crushed.”

Lish blinked at her in surprise.

“Odessa, dear,” Maia said. “I hadn’t called for a vote yet.”

“There’s nothing else he could say that would convince me to make any other vote,” Odessa said, she looked as imperial as any queen of any land under any sun. She had all of the wildness and the elegance of the wine moon in her eyes and faltered not one bit.

For a moment Maia was silent, and they all knew what Lish’s fate would be. “I suppose you’re right,” Maia said, sounding hollow. “Jaskier, yours is the second vote. You were a witness to his work.”

Jaskier swallowed and stood as straight as he could. “Lish created a monster who didn’t know what it was. That was abominably cruel and dangerous to the safety of everyone. His implication that what he’s doing is for the good of his people isn’t true. What he’s doing he’s doing for himself. His actions are wrong and his reasons are worse.”

Lish looked at Maia, voice gone a little faint. “Your vote counts the most, head of the council, first among us.”

Jaskier couldn’t say why, but the judgement seemed to have surprised Lish. For the life of him, Jaskier couldn’t have guess what Lish thought would have happened when the cuckoos discovered what he’d done.

“You were right, Lish,” Maia said. “No more exceptions. This is too much. For the corruption of our law, the sinister nature of your plan, and the danger you put us in, judgment has passed. You have done wrong. I am not fully impartial. The council will decide your punishment.”

Lish stood up to begin to scream – his cry shrieking and painful and enough to make Jaskier gasp out a sob. 

Maia inhaled. 

Jaskier and Odessa leapt toward where Renfri stood between them, they wrapped themselves around her, covering her ears with a hand apiece, trying to muffle everything they could. 

Maia, greatest of the cuckoos, first on the counsel, Sang her own Song. It started low, almost below human hearing and rose and rose and rose higher and higher. Rising in volume and the ringing tone of a bell, the slide of a stone against the blade of a scythe. In his mind Jaskier was full of memory, that perfect moment of the first sip of broth when one was hungry and cold, the feel of crawling into warm sheets, the feeling of his father telling him he was proud, the laughter of his mother at some silly joke. He thought that maybe he should be afraid, perhaps that he should have some bit of terror in him. He was worried about Renfri whose body wasn’t meant to take noise like this. What Maia lacked in Odessa’s magic she made up for in range and volume and a human body was even less able to take the wordless power of Maia’s Song then theirs was.

Jaskier didn’t feel afraid though. His aunt wouldn’t do something that would really hurt him and the Song brought up an endless string of pearls of happy memories spooling around him. The Song made impossible trills and jumps, sounds that a human could only dream to make. There was the same beauty in it, harsh and delicate, as the coming of winter. The room vibrated in time with Maia’s voice, the window chattering like teeth until they just gave in and broke. At a certain point, Jaskier felt his ears pop and then everything went ringingly silent. He could still feel it, the vibration of her voice - could feel the loop and slice of it. Free of words, free of convention, pure music. Lish cowered small, eyes wide and seeing nothing.

And then the vibration stopped.

Odessa shifted out from under Jaskier. He looked up to see her looking at Maia with a brow furrowed. Maia was speaking, but Jaskier could hear nothing. She mimed playing the lute and singing then pointed to her ears. Odessa scrambled her lute around and made a face as she strummed the strings. If the blood drying from her ears was any indication, she’d gone deaf as well. She strummed along and he could sort of hear the tune she was playing in his head just watching the strings she was playing, He kept his arms wrapped tight around Renfri, holding her close. He rocked Renfri in time with the swaying of Odessa’s body, the moving of her mouth and then Jaskier’s ears popped and he could hear Odessa almost shouting her way through Hen on the Nest.

“Ow,” Jaskier said, working his jaw.

“Excellent work, Odessa,” Maia said, smiling down at them. “It saves having to find a healer and try to get you three fixed up without explaining how you all went deaf. Thank you for your help. Lish won’t be moving for a while. As much as I love to see you, I need to go inform the counsel that Lish was planning on genocide.” Her smile fell and she looked so sad before she collected herself. “Odessa, Renfri. The council will need you available once we come to a decision. Lish is clever, if he was able to do all this right under the counsel’s nose then who knows what backup plans he might have in place.”

Odessa nodded, her face set.

“Jaskier,” Maia turned to him. “Queen Calanthe is holding a banquet for her daughter. Mellike was going to perform there. He is going to withdraw and suggest you as a replacement. You are to go and manage the situation. If anyone can change the tenor of the court, it is someone with your capacity of profound love.”

He stared up at her with wide eyes. “I can’t stop wars,” he said. “I’m too young, Aunt Maia. I can’t do this.”

“You don’t have to stop a war,” Maia told him, reaching down to press a hand to his cheek. “Only fill the Queen’s heart with love. Try to convince her of mercy. Try to change her mind with whatever means are at your disposal.”

Jaskier’s brow furrowed and then relaxed. If there was one person he knew who could convince someone to set aside their sword it was Geralt. He’d first find Geralt and together they would fix this. “Yes, Aunt Maia. As you say.”

***

Geralt woke with a start when Odessa _blanged_ hard on her lute.

He snarled at her, too out of it to even curse.

“Good,” she said. “You’re awake.”

“I hate you,” he said.

She just winked and blew him a kiss. The similarity between her and Jaskier hit him in the sternum with more strength than he was prepared for. “So, first things first,” she said. “I need to share some information with you.”

Now he was awake enough to curse her out, he did so and liberally, staggering over to sort through his clothes for something to wear. If she didn’t care about his nakedness he wasn’t going to be bothered by it either. He almost began to relieve his bladder in front of her to prove a point about breaking into strange men’s rooms, but shyness drove him behind the privacy curtain embarrassed of his own modesty. No matter how aggravated he was, Odessa was not the sort of woman one pissed in front of.

There was something oddly hesitant about the way she spoke, plucking out little combinations of notes – did Jaskier call them chords or was that something else? – as he went about his morning business. “So I don’t travel alone…”

“Am I going to have to convince a jealous lover that I have no designs on you?” he grumbled.

“Ha,” she said instead of laughed. “Ha, ha.”

He pulled back the curtain once he had his pants on. “Is it someone I know?”

“Funny story,” she told him and then said nothing else.

“Are you going to tell it to me?” he asked, storming across his room to pack his things.

“So once upon a time,” she said with almost exactly the same intonation as Jaskier. “There were two little bardlings off on an adventure, making their way from the glorious halls of-”

“Faster,” he said.

She looked up to the right for a moment and began again. “So they decided to celebrate with a drink because-”

 _”Faster than that,”_ he said again.

“They were outside Blaviken minding their own business and doing no harm when someone threw a somebody at them!” she continued.

Alright, they were getting somewhere now. “Somebody, or someone’s body?” he asked.

“Well, it was later learned that the cart in question intended to throw someone’s body, but in fact, it was _somebody_.”

“Who’s body,” he said. He was already done talking. All this chatter was just noise.

“Hmm,” she said, her lips pressed together. “Hmm.”

He honestly couldn’t tell if she was trying to annoy him or if she was nervous.

“Um, well. Renfri of Creyden.”

He blinked at her, not quite able to fit together what she said as words. It was so much of a tangle in his head he couldn’t seem to hear her. “Who’s body?”

“Renfri,” she said again. “Renfri of Creyden.”

He staggered back. He felt light-headed. “That’s.” His hands felt around himself for something to grab ahold of. “That’s not true. Why would you say that?”

“Imagine what you’re feeling now, but you’ve just walked out of the inn into a crowded street and she’s getting the horses ready. Forewarned is fore-“

He darted out of the room, training the only thing that had him grabbing his bag. He rushed down the stairs and out the inn door, and then- He blinked and then blinked again and- Renfri was rubbing the nose of a ruddy colored horse. It was, it was Renfri. She should have been much older, but she looked almost the same. The only aging she’d done seemed to be the way she held herself and the length of her hair. Confident, like there was a pain inside her that had eased somehow – been stitched together by the years. 

He lunged at her, tried to grab her, but she slipped away out of his fingers. “You can’t be her. You aren’t. I watched her die.”

She was composed, prepared for his grief. It crashed against her like the sea against a cliff. “You have a silver sword,” she told him. 

They were gathering a crowd. When he hesitated, she drew the sword herself and gripped the blade, staring him in the eye.

He just stared at her and stared at her. She was-

“How?”

She lifted her chin, her soft hair had been braided and then the braid wrapped around her head like a crown. She wore a cloak pin shaped like a shrike killing a snake to hold closed the sturdy wine-red wool of her cloak. Her eyes were the same, just settled more. There was something strong and soft in them now. “Eclipse magic,” she answered. “All that I told them was that we had known each other. They didn’t know anything else.”

“Jaskier knew!” he snarled out between his teeth. “He never said anything!”

“Did you ever tell him about me?” she asked.

He looked at her, panting with anger and grief and confusion.

“I didn’t think so.” She smiled at him and the smile was neither happy nor sad. There was a kindness to it though. 

“I killed you,” he said again. This changed so much of his life, so much of his personality. How much of him was a reaction to killing her? To not knowing if what she was doing was right?

“And I recovered beautifully,” she told him. She hedged her body against him, dropping the sword back into its sheath as she turned away from him. “Go get your horse. If you want to meet up with the girl you need to hurry. We aren’t losing travel time because you can’t get over a little miracle.”

Something fundamental, foundational in Geralt shifted sideways. Things he thought were true about the world had been altered. He got on his horse the way a condemned man might, all surrender and dread and rode after the two women.

Chattering was irritating anyway – Jaskier’s especially had an almost musical quality that drowned out his sense of hearing – but Odessa’s chattering was hateful. She talked and talked to Renfri as if she didn’t even need to breathe until the sound was like scraping a knife against flailed skin. Geralt wanted to talk to Renfri, ask her something, anything. Some question that would verify that what he was experiencing was real and not some magic trick or fever dream. He had seen her eyes go blank. But now-

“I’ve never heard necessarily from a linguistic expert or anything that they're called goslings because they guzzle, but look at that long neck – I mean they must do. Is there another way for a goose to drink?” Odessa was rambling on and Geralt was so angry, _so_ angry that-

He took in a sharp breath. He had told Odessa he owed her and he did. To be better if nothing else. Was he going to throw a tantrum like a child because he didn’t get to talk to Renfri? The same way he had a tantrum at everything that didn’t go his way. Arguing lord’s over who had pretended to kill a manticore, at Yennifer for all she dismissed him, at Jaskier who had only tried to do well for him in that awkward bumbling fawn way of his. Jaskier had given Geralt ten years of his mortal life like it cost him nothing, had sewn up his wounds, and demanded hot food and warm baths for Geralt’s benefit from innkeepers across the continent. 

Why should Renfri bother to talk to him?

Talk to a man to would rather murder her friends and slit her throat than to allow her to see justice delivered to a man who cut up babies for his curiosity. Up ahead Renfri laughed at Odessa’s antics and the sound was so bright and warm, like mulled wine. Odessa bloomed under her laughter, looking so happy at her friend’s delight.

Odessa was right. He needed to deal with his own luggage. He needed to tend to his own sword and his own armor. It wasn’t Jaskier’s duty or Renfri’s to deal with his guilt.

He rode up to the other side of Renfri and stayed silent. He could tell she knew he was there by the way her eyes drifted over to him and then back again, but she kept her attention on Odessa. He waited. It seemed like hours, but he allowed himself to enter a sort of meditation, not a true meditation but a quietude. Odessa’s voice was quite musical, there was a rhythm to it that was deeply pleasant.

Renfri startled him out of his almost trance by turning to him.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” he blurted at her.

She blinked at him in surprise for a moment. “I am.”

“I’m glad you have Odessa and Jaskier as friends,” he said again, feeling like he was accomplishing the same amount as throwing stones into a pond

“When I told them that I was evil and what Stregobor had observed in me as a child they asked me if it was true.” Her reply was as unfettered as his own, so that was fair enough. “I don’t think anyone had asked me before if it was true or not. I didn’t even know. I had been told I was a monster so much I didn’t even know myself. I couldn’t remember if I’d done any of the things people had told me I had done or not.”

He watched her. If he was good at one thing it was not talking. Listening was just not talking while paying attention.

“They advised me not to believe a man who had invested interest in cutting me into pieces.” She laughed. It sounded happy and sad at one, he didn’t know what that meant. She leaned close to him, “I don’t think they’re capable of understanding that we’re monsters. I don’t think they’re capable of comprehending it. They’re not capable of believing it. And I think, I think that makes me feel like I’m not capable of believing that I’m a monster either.”

Odessa had leaned forward to look at them with a sort of confused, worried look on her face.

“How have you been doing, Geralt?” Renfri asked him, that old edge back in her smile. “Have you been believing the people who have invested interest in seeing you cut you into pieces?”

“I don’t know,” he told her.

“Well,” she smiled at him. “Maybe it’s time you figured that out.”

“Jaskier-“ he began.

“Careful,” Renfri told him, her eyes narrowing. “A wound to the heart will scar like any other cut. And where there are too many scars there can be no more feeling. When the flesh has grown back thick and numb that’s the end of it. Jaskier is a sweet man, but you can only take advantage of that so many times.”

“Hmm,” he said. He didn’t know what else to say.

Renfri laughed, socking him in the arm. He had forgotten how strong she was. “Hmm yourself. I think you’re trying to be better already. Don’t stop trying. It’ll be worth it.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do they ever stop talking? No, they do not.

Odessa and Renfri meet them at the pass. Ciri recognizes Turnip and Parsnip first, the way Parsnip stood with his head over Turnip’s neck. Hand between her shoulder blades, Jaskier hurried her forward toward them. Renfri was wearing a bright green dress and Aunt Odessa was in a sunny sort of orange.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you,” Uncle Julian said. He’d been on pins and needles since the Nilfgaard soldier escaped. 

“News of the two of you has been spreading far and wide,” Renfri said. “Soldiers are being sent out for patrols as we speak.”

“Luckily,” Odessa said, pulling on a long blonde wig. “I’m a master strategist thanks to all the romantic comedies I helped put on when I worked at that Oxenfurt theater. Drab little place, excellent access to plays.”

“What do you mean?” Ciri asked, already knowing. 

“Nilfgaard is looking for a young lady with long blonde hair, traveling around these environs,” Renfri said, struggling with her own wig. Odessa reached over to straighten it for her, tidying it up so it didn’t half sit over her forehead. “Now there are two extra Princess Cirillas. You two are going to take the love birds,” she gestured over to the horses. “And get out of here.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Ciri said, a stab of panic hitting her in the gut.

“Sorry, dear one,” Odessa said, kissing Ciri in the middle of the forehead. “We’re bigger and stronger than you. You can’t stop us. We want to keep you safe.”

“We’ll be fine,” Renfri assured her.

“I should dye my hair,” Ciri said. “Or cut it short, or both.”

Renfri grinned and Odessa nodded. “I have just the thing. Would you like to dress as a boy as well?”

“Yes,” Ciri said, the idea of going in disguise taking away some of the buzzy anxiousness she had been feeling.

Uncle Julian was the one to cut her hair short, since he did his own. The sudden loss of the hair hit her with a sudden regret that her uncle seemed to sense. “You alright?”

“I was expected to have long hair,” she said. Odessa looked up from where she was mixing the hair dye against a stone.

Shears in hand, Uncle Julian waited.

“Do it quick,” Ciri told him. “This is the smartest thing to do. I don’t want to think about it, I just want it to happen.”

Huffing out a conflicted whining sort of hum, Uncle Julian finished quickly. Light-headed, Ciri leaned forward to offer her head to Aunt Odessa.

Behind her, Uncle Julian gathered it up and packed it away in one of the knapsacks. “In case you want to have a wig made,” he said.

She hadn’t thought of having a wig made, the thought made her feel better.

The hair dye smelt warm and rich like bread and after Ciri had changed into Renfri’s clothes, Odessa had her lay on her back and rinsed it out again.

“Enough time,” Renfri said.

Renfri was holding a cloak pin in her hand, a bird attacking a snake, pacing back and forth. She tried to give it to Odessa.

 _“Evil howls in the dead of night when the shrike of justice strikes, the moon’s wine red and evil’s dead when the shrike of justice strikes,”_ Odessa Sang, wrapping Renfri’s fingers back around it. _“She breaks the sword under her foot and burns the tow’r to ash and soot the wizard’s powers all are moot when the shrike of justice strikes._ I’m going to be fine worrywart. It’ll be an adventure. Like the old days.”

Odessa ran off before Renfri could say anything else, laughing over her shoulder at Renfri’s expression.

Renfri made an aggravated sound and ran off in the opposite direction.

With a gentle hand, Uncle Julian squeezed her shoulder. “Come on then. It’s time we move.” 

Ciri felt enough worry she didn’t speak, just thought as they moved along at a decent pace. She wanted to think, to put her words together properly. What were conversations except for songs without music? There was rhythm and meter and movement. Enough time passed she got hungry and dug through the pack for provisions. There were candied fruit and nuts in a little bag. She ate some and put the rest in her pocket.

“Do you keep secrets from me?” she asked Master Julian, making him start around to look at her.

He thought a moment until the tension going out of him. “I suppose, yes.”

“Like what?” He hadn’t asked why she asked. She liked that about him. He knew she was up to something and let her lead the way of the conversation without interference. It was not the way he talked to Odessa, he was always asking Odessa why because she was such a labyrinth of thought. Ciri thought differently than her aunt and so Julian spoke to her differently.

“How many people I’ve kissed,” he said. His grin widened at the way she made a face. “The people I fell in love with. Things that other people have told me in confidence. Some things that I don’t know you’re ready for, or that aren’t right to tell you yet. We all have secrets.”

“Is one of those things you don’t think I’m ready for the reason that Odessa and Renfri are going to such lengths to keep me safe?” she asked.

Julian looked at her, mouth gone tense in the corner. “First off, they love you very much. There’s no such things as such lengths when it comes to keeping you safe. Second off, well. Yes. I wanted to wait. Either for you to have your second name or for you to ask. A secret out of omission.”

“I’m asking now,” she said, pulling up so they were properly side by side.

“I wasn’t supposed to be your uncle,” Julian said. 

Ciri stared at him for a long moment. “What?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be your uncle,” Julian said again. “I’ve already told you your mother was a hatchling place in unusual circumstances. How she wasn’t reported. You know how I was sent to go investigate on Mistress Gajos’ assignment and discovered she was pregnant.”

“Sent with Geralt of Rivia,” she verified. “The wolf of peace. You said he could talk his way out of a knife at his throat.”

“He did once,” Julian’s face lit up the way it always did when he told his old stories before he brought himself in again. “I didn’t tell you that the cuckoo that hid her, that was going to use her to destroy nations. He made her to be a weapon. He failed, but he had created a second plan in case something prevented him from enacting the first. A cuckoo from his own clan named Cahir, only a few years older than you was assigned to be your uncle. Cahir is the man with the bird on his head. He’s the one who’s been trying to find you. He is in the Nilfgaard army for one reason only. He was raised that his whole purpose in life was to find you and turn you into a weapon.”

She stared at him. “When did you discover this?”

“Only just before I was able to find you,” Julian said. She knew all his tells, knew the way his eyelid twitched meant he was telling the truth if not all of it, that there was something painful about it for him. “All teaching assignments go through the counsel and for some reason Cahir’s appointment slipped through the cracks. I went to the counsel myself and got permission for a special dispensation to be your uncle myself and I went to go find you.”

“The man with the bird on his head was supposed to be my uncle?” she asked again. She felt like a great empty room inside. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you would ask before now. You were so curious about everything else, I didn’t think it would take so long for you to ask how I came to be your uncle when I was missing from your life for so long,” he said.

She blinked at the road up ahead. “Why didn’t you just tell me when I didn’t ask?”

Master Julian looked ahead at the road, blinking, collecting his thoughts. “When Renfri was a young girl she was told she was a weapon to bring about the end of the world because of some eclipse. Two heavenly bodies moving together and suddenly a child is an embodiment of evil. It destroyed a part of her as a child that she had to reshape herself over decades. You were born to be a real weapon for a real end of the world, not just some fairy tale. I didn’t want you to have that as part of your identity until you were old enough to know that’s not what you are. That you’re not a what at all. That you’re your own person.” 

The road up ahead was smooth, dirt and a bit of gravel with trees stretching over them more and more until it began to look like some grand pathway overhead in green velvet.

“You are a cuckoo. And a cuckoo has a second name, a second self. The them that they make,” Master Julian told her. “A home that they carry in their heart always. I want you to be a cuckoo, I want you to make yourself. Even if I never get my own second name back, I want you to live the self that you are and not what people proposed about you before your birth.”

“Will you love me after I have my second name?” she asked him.

“Of course,” he answered on an exhale as it was as easy as breathing. His eyes smiled at her, warm and kind. “Of course. I’m your uncle. I’ll always love you.”

“Even if I’m someone else than I am now?” she looked at his face. He looked tired. He’d been worrying about her. She didn’t know how old he was. He could be a hundred years old, but looked only a few years older than she was – other than his fuzzy chest that made him look like an old man. Caring for her had aged him. He looked thin around the seams, like someone could get their nails under his edges and peel him apart.

He reached out, his hand resting on her shoulder. “Everyone is always someone new. Whoever you are next, it will be someone wonderful.”

She leaned across on her horse, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Parsnip and Turnip were familiar with each other. They stayed like that, side by side until Ciri straightened again. The name Ciri didn’t quite sit right on her anymore, it felt a bit like clothes that didn’t fit quite right, a little tight here, or losing their shape there. The name still fit too well to be discarded, but felt odd all the same.

She was eating her midday meal when a group of Nilfgaard soldiers came over the next hill.

 _”The cuckoo is a fine bird he sings as he flies, he brings us good tidings and tells us no lies,”_ Uncle Sung as they approached, moving Turnip forward to block direct sight of her. “We’re just two couriers, we’re on your side, men.”

The soldiers looked at Ciri and for one moment she thought Uncle Julian was going to have Turnip stamp them to death. One of them pointed at Ciri, “Take off your hat!”

Breathing in slow and even breaths, Ciri removed her cap, soft brown curls falling down along her forehead. The combination of her short brown hair and her uncle’s Song seemed to have done the trick. Uncle Julian’s hand rested casually on his dagger as he smiled at them. _”Believe me._ We’re just couriers. Are there any problem, friends?”

“He’s a boy,” the captain said, looking irritated. “Why would a courier mislead us? All they do is bring us good news, they wouldn’t tell us lies.” He waved at Ciri and Julian, “Get moving, don’t make me report that you were lazing on the job. I’ll send on ahead to see that you two aren’t stopped again.”

When they’d traveled on a way, Julian reached across to squeeze her shoulder. “You did excellently. Better than me.”

“Control your protective instinct, you’re going to give us away,” she told him, too scared to say anything else.

“Of course, I’ll keep that in mind.” He laughed, a self-deprecating sound. For all Uncle’s ferocity in protecting her, he was rather soft still. He fought like a feral animal with hands and stones, but was helpless against warfare. She didn’t know if he was quite strong enough to really lift and use a sword. It was all the same really, she didn’t love him for a sword’s sake, she loved him because he adored her. Because she was inside the secret, not out of it. “We’ll need to rest the horses soon; these old dears aren’t as young as they used to be.”

There was the sound of hoof beats from behind them. “Princess Cirilla! Stop at once.”

She looked over her shoulder and her heart went cold. Cahir. It had to be Cahir.

“You’re mistaken,” Uncle Julian said. “We’re just-”

“Spare me your Song, imposter. I know just who the two of you were as soon as those soldiers got to camp. You think I don’t know what humans look like when they’ve been Sung to.”

Uncle turned to her. “I don’t know if I mentioned, but I’m glad you thought to ask about secrets.”

“Destiny’s on our side,” Ciri told him.

“We need to turn the horses around,” Uncle told her quickly.

She gave him the disbelieving expression she got sometimes that made Uncle roll his eyes at her. “We should run.”

“Turnip and Parsnip are old now. They’re strong, but they don’t run like they used to. If we run he’ll catch us. It’s better to turn around and at least have space between us.”

She didn’t like it, but she did it, rotating the Parsnip slowly around to face Cahir.

“Princess, I know it’s you,” Cahir called out to her. “There’s no need for anymore games.”

“His horse is faster than ours,” Uncle said.

“You mentioned that,” she said.

“No _his horse is faster than ours.”_

“Hmm,” she answered, watching Cahir’s slow approach. Cahir was talking nonsense so she largely ignored it.

“Turnip and Parsnip couldn’t catch up to whoever was on it. If someone wanted to flee, that’s the horse to do it on.”

A pit formed in Ciri’s stomach.

“Are you stronger than him?” she asked, the question making her a little lightheaded.

Beside her she could feel Uncle’s consideration. “To keep you safe? Yes.”

“He’s a soldier,” she whispered, bringing Parsnip to a stop.

“Don’t worry about me. Whatever you chose is alright. I will do whatever I can to help and protect you no matter what you might decide to do.”

“You, Jaskier the bard,” Cahir pointed at Uncle Julian. “No more talking from you.”

“Who trained you?” Julian said down his nose at him. “While I’m an uncle you will refer to me as Master Julian if you must refer to me at all.”

Cahir flushed and then flustered up, turning to Ciri.

“I’m supposed to be your uncle,” Cahir said, chin high. “That man lied to you. He’s an imposter.”

Ciri looked at Uncle. He didn’t look back at her, he was watching Cahir.

“I order you to come here immediately,” Cahir snapped at her. “I am your uncle, you will obey me and you will obey me now. Come here.” 

Ciri was a princess, she was in control.

She got off her horse and walked toward him slowly.

In Ciri’s head she hear Renfri, see her expression in her mind as the woman said, _Men are all alike._

She drew in, bending her shoulders in to look small. Her lashes fluttered together, soft as butterfly wings. “Please, I don’t want to ride like a sack of potatoes. Please, let me ride normally.”

He sighed at her. He really didn’t look that scary up close. “Fine. You’ll ride behind me then.”

“I need help getting up,” she told him.

He got off the horse.

It was the side closest to her, which was unfortunate, but not unsurmountable. She blinked her eyes sleepy and doe-like at Cahir, letting him lift her by the waist and help her up to the saddle.

Uncle guided Turnip and Parsnip so they weren’t blocking the way in front of her. He hadn’t said anything, he was only watching. His kind face had gone stern and hard.

“Move forward so I can get on behind you,” Cahir said to her.

Ciri looked down at him and felt her spine turn to iron. She inhaled, the air filling her lungs filling her with power. Cahir looked up at her in something like alarm just as she Screamed. The Scream hit Cahir like a fist to the sternum, knocking him back into the treeline and startling his horse into a shrieking run. The horse cut past Uncle still seated on Turnip, cut its way down the road, cut into the woods and carried her off in her own direction. She didn’t know where she was going, she didn’t have her instrument. Everything was too fast and too much. But Uncle Julian had believed she could do this. Aunt Odessa and Renfri wouldn’t have come up with this plan if they didn’t believe she could do it.

*** 

Jaskier hadn’t been this nervous since he received his first assignment to be an uncle. His request for a special dispensation went through, he was going to be Princess Cirilla’s uncle. Mistress Gajos, Maia she kept reminding him, had delivered the assignment personally. They sat in the little parlor he shared with the other music and poetry professors, except for Wojcik of course who was too particular to share space with anyone but his cat. Everything seemed to glow in the firelight from the mystery and the potential of tomorrow. He’d already packed his bag, it was just a matter of waiting for early morning to set out. “I know I requested the position,” he told her. “I’m just nervous. What if I run in Geralt? What if I don’t teach her what she needs to know.”

“You teach every day, Professor,” she told him as she settled back into the armchair with her cup of tea. “The only difference will be Cirilla’s circumstances.”

He looked at the letter resting on the table between them, read over it again. “How do I know I’ll be a good uncle for her?” he asked.

“Because every day you’ll try to be a good one. Every day you’ll wake up and try to be even better than the day before.”

“I am excited to teach her,” he wanted to qualify. “It’s just. It’s just such a big thing.”

“It is, but you’re more than able. Don’t forget you’ve done this before. There’s a special bond between an aunt or uncle and the hatchling they teach. Something you will treasure your whole life. It’s alright to be intimidated by the situation.”

“It’s-“ he felt so silly saying it. “It’s just that I haven’t even met her and I’ve already started worrying about her. Nilfgaard is a week away.”

Maia squeezed his hand. “You have a week, my dear. Make use of it. Worrying is unfortunately just part of the job. It’s instinct. Being an aunt or an uncle – the most important thing becomes your hatchling. No matter who you’re uncle to in the future, there’s that part the bond that will make you feel like you want to be your best self for them, and part of being an uncle that will make you willing to die for them.”

Jaskier nodded. “As soon as it gets past midnight I’m riding. I can’t get there soon enough.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every americanjedi production requires a dream sequence and some angst. Here are your doses, friends.

To lose one’s Voice, to lose it was a horror that hooked its way into Jaskier’s insides and unspooled him. He felt it happen with the careless flinging of Geralt’s wish, not taking them as serious as any of Geralt’s other threats. And then, like suddenly missing an arm or leg, he felt something in his throat give out. He had never felt a dread like that, never that sudden certainty that he was going to die. He’d already been so hungry, the Countess de Stael and him had always had an arrangement about feeding but she’d had the second pregnancy she wanted and out the door he went. He’d been traveling, searching for the familiarity of someone he could feed from when he’d run into Geralt.

There was a complacency in the human shape, the familiarity of old socks. But he wasn’t human. He was something else and whether the djinn had done it to spite him or just out of spite. There was a pull and a pang that would have been better if it hurt, if there was a tragedy to it. It was as though the old comfortable sock of his human body was being peeled away from the foot inside it. The barest rasp of his human vocal cords, a stranger’s sound inside his head and he folded in on himself to help him, to protect him. Instead his Voice was gone and there was blood in his mouth. The wrongness of it folded him over and made his throat into a fountain of blood. 

Terror twisted its way into him. It widened his eyes and made his hand grasp at Geralt. It was an accident. It was so obviously an accident and it was so obviously going to kill him.

Geralt caught him around the ribs and lifted him up off his feet. Jaskier closed his eyes, pressing his cheek to the strength of the muscle there as if that would do anything for him. Geralt’s breath hadn’t sped up, he seemed calm. In a single smooth motion, Geralt released Roach from her tether and climbed up on her back. Looking down at him, Geralt extended his arm, he didn’t say anything not even a hmm. Jaskier let himself get pulled up behind the witcher. He remembered when he was younger. How Maia said they needed people. He’d known before, but now he felt it. The way Geralt cut out his throat without thought and now barreled down the road calling for a healer to any person on two feet.

Jaskier’s neck was swelling.

All of a sudden Geralt seemed very young, even in Jaskier’s own broken quiet, his helplessness and the way he couldn’t stop coughing up blood – there was a sort of young irresponsibility to the witcher that came from being alone for so long. He could not describe it. Geralt always had a mystical ancientness about him – and not just because of the white hair. Inside that old crusty man was a child the witcher still held onto who hadn’t had to learn – or hadn’t been able to – the weight his own word might carry when it landed on another’s back. That hidden youngness was a thorn left in the flesh so long to be grown over, it made the Witcher thoughtless and angry

Jaskier was dragged into a tent to fall on his knees in front of some kind of elven healer. Geralt’s hand stayed on his back, grounding and comforting. Jaskier could feel time slipping through his fingers, felt it in the razor scrape of his voice. He wanted to tell Geralt what he was, wanted to tell him what was wrong. He needed his _Voice back._

The color in him was bleeding out to some other place. Everything became odd and disconnected as if he was looking at things from very far away. There were bits and pieces and then apple juice and naked men- Then he was very far away.

He was dying. His body was far way. He was well familiar with the edges and curves of himself as only one who was well-bedded could be, that familiarity peeled off him until he was some place distant or deep within himself. Here among the dandelions and daffodils, the buttercups and the light of the moon, he felt formed into something different. He reached up, the moon above him glowed gold with honeycomb. The bones of his hands had turned intricate in the golden light, his fingers flexed and the mysterious worlds under his skin almost entranced him. Was this what a cuckoo was when it wasn’t a person? he wondered. Where had the other parts of him gone? Would he get them back?

The air was full of the sound of the lute.

He was dying. His hand reached out and impossibly reached to pressed along the honeycomb of the moon, the pads of the fingers dimpling each comb. Amber gold spilled like a river under his fingers, he felt the pressure somewhere in his abdomen. It was wonderful and horrible, like having someone lovingly reorganize his intestines. When he pressed his fingers to his mouth, he tasted happiness and love.

_This is me,_ he thought. _If they crack me open like an egg this is what my insides would taste like._

He wondered if he would live here forever after he died, or if his moon would fade away and he’d be gone, or if the valley will fold itself up like a handkerchief until he was smaller and smaller and ended up resting at the back of some great big metaphysical dresser drawer in the sky until he was improbably discovered at some impossible date.

_“The sunlight dapples gold and bright a meadow stretches hill to hill,”_ Jaskier Sang. _“The valley’s bright with gold tonight with dandelions and daffodils. The buttercup is all full up with nectar sweet as summer wine, the sun is shining everywhere with daffodils and dandelions. How sweet the fawn, how sweet the doe, how sweet the song the larks all trill, no king has ever richer been than dandelions and daffodils.”_

He Sung of a harvest moon that looked like honeycombs and crowns of buttercups and the rush of the wind tousling hair in affection before it ran its fingers over the blossoms spread out in the valley of sunlight. How beautiful the Valley of Plenty. It was golden and sweet and it lit up the space around him.

Everything moved so slow and light. He looked down at the golden petals jostling around his feet, he wished Odessa was there. He missed her.

Still, this place wasn’t so scary. It wasn’t so bad. He wouldn’t mind dwelling in such a place.

Then he inhaled.

There was a woman, beautiful, naked, and armed – not his preferred combination but such was life. He had no idea where he was or why he was or how he had even got there. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken up with a woman having been overtaken by instinct and drink, but somehow he doubted he’d take a break from dying to roll about in the hay for a bit.

“I think I, uh, left my,” _think, think, think!_ “Cat!” He was a bard, he couldn’t think of anything? “On the stove! I- I really must be going!”

Her movements were smooth, like a snake – powerful and wise and not that safe for birds to be around. “Express your deepest desires and you can be on your way.”

Was there no door out of this place? “Well, my deepest desires are currently satisfied, thank you so much.”

“Make your final wish!” she ordered him.

He didn’t perform well when someone had a vise grip on his- Wait was that funny? Should he put it in a song? The poor farmer didn’t perform well when-

“Pay attention!” she shook him.

“Paying attention!”

“How’s that throat of yours? The throat I fixed for you?” she asked.

“Oh! Well!” he said, voice nearly at pre-pubescent levels. “It’s lovely, thank you, excellent work! Only thing left is to go out in to the wide world and-“

She tightened her hand and he could feel his eyes blink out of sequence.

“I know what you are,” the woman said, the knife in her hand threatening to give him the very closest of shaves. 

“Do you?” he asked about six octaves higher than normal. If she hadn’t known what he was before, or if he was something at all, that sudden look of panic on his face was probably very informative.

Her smile was slow and cruel, but her eyes still searched his face. She wasn’t pushing like one would expect. “Someone… different. All the djinn did was turn you mute and yet you almost died. That’s odd, don’t you think? Someone dying for losing their voice. ”

“I wouldn’t know?” he squeaked out again. “I’d follow your expertise?” 

Her smile was slow. “I suggest that unless you want me to get curious that you make your final wish. You are traveling with a witcher after all.”

He pressed his eyes closed, “I wish very badly to leave this place!”

She let out a predatory sigh that made him ready to leap out of any available window. He met Geralt on his way out of the house and his fool mouth couldn’t keep the man from running back into the mouth of danger again.

He watched Geralt walk away.

He couldn’t keep Geralt safe. He could Sing every Song in the world and he couldn’t keep the people he loved safe. What was the use of Singing at all if he couldn’t keep the people he loved safe? He could see them die and live and lose and win and in the end of all of it- In the end of all of it he could Sing and it could mean nothing. How soon and how sharp, to feel a sort of heartbreak crack a chasm in him he would have to fill himself.

Did it matter if he deserved loyalty if he couldn’t get any for himself? He wanted Odessa the way a child wanted a light in the darkness. It was as it was. Everything under the sun had a reason and a purpose. It was not his purpose to weep and the reason of his birth was the same as every other cuckoo’s. To survive in a world that rubbed backward against their metaphorical feathers, a place they didn’t belong. To protect the next generation that was even more suited for the world around them.

He sat, and he waited, and he watched the sun in roiling fire trace its path across the sky. It was as it was. He was as he was.

***

Like any person trying to chase after a princess that just stole his horse, Cahir leapt atop Parsnip and started off, Turnip chasing after without having to be told.

Julian took Cahir by the hair in a fist. He could feel his teeth bare, his eyes widen. Cahir made a snarling sound, shaking his head, but Julian held tight and with the other hand pulled up on Turnip’s reins. For a moment, Julian thought that he had failed, that he’d planned wrong. And then. And then! Cahir was pulled backward, back over his saddle, back over Turnip’s rump, and down toward the ground. Parsnip twisted and kicked as Cahir clung to the reins until the man had to let go or be trampled. Cahir dropped and then Julian went down on top of him with a shout.

Cahir took a breath in, _”Tangling vine and-”_

Julian boxed him hard across the mouth letting out a soft spray of blood onto the road.

Cahir took another breath in and Julian covered his mouth with both his hands.

“I know what you are,” Julian told him, wiping off the blood from his chin with the plane of his shoulder. “I can smell it on you.”

Cahir’s eyes narrowed, he tensed up with the blocky grace of a soldier. This was going to hurt a lot. 

Julian shifted with the armored fist that tried to anchor itself into his ribs. _“Where hunger is the whetstone and will the knife. It cuts me as I clench it, it slices where I sheath it.”_

Screaming under Julian’s hands, Cahir’s eyes went wide. With panting breath, Cahir breathed through the pain, eyes wide and feral. The second swing of his fist cracked something in Julian’s side that traced a line of fire from his hip bone to all the way up behind his ear.

_“The sword of the zealous burns in the night time, burns like the solstice, burns like a black sun! It twists in my hands like a spinner at woolwork!”_

Howling, Cahir twisted under his hands, trying to throw him off. The soldier stared at him and flailed and twisted.

_“It burns like my hunger and sharpens like thirst!”_

Cahir writhed so hard he threw Julian off of him. He screamed into the dirt of the path, his arms tight around wounds that were absent but still felt. Julian went for the underbrush, searching for a rock. He wasn’t breathing right and every move was pain, but he thought of Ciri and how long it had taken to tease her to trust and lure her to laughter.

His little niece was already growing so big inside herself, was feeling her way toward her name, reaching for the power that rested in the landscape she hid inside herself – a world inside her bones. He could and would take the pain of it. “Why aren’t there any rocks!” he shouted at the brush.

The soldier had laid of grunting and groaning long enough to just pant there in the dirt. When Julian turned to look at him the man hand drawn a dagger and laid there poised as a serpent.

“Oh leave off,” Julian waved at him. “She’s my niece now and I will kill you to keep you away from her if I have to knaw out your neck with my own teeth.”

“She’s mine!” Cahir gritted at him.

“She doesn’t belong to anybody!” Julian started to wave his arms and then had to stop. “Ow, ow, _ow_. She’s her own person. I’m sure you think you mean well.”

“Don’t tell me what I think!” Cahir snarled.

Julian kicked dirt at him. He was too far away, it didn’t land, but it was the thought that counted.

“I’m going to kill you and find her, and I’m going to bring her back with me and she will be trained,” Cahir repeated. “She will live in Nilfgaard and she will bring the world under her control.”

Julian didn’t doubt that Cahir would kill him. He was a hardy little weed, but he wasn’t a soldier, not strong enough to lift a sword. He wore a pretty green suit and goodly boots. There was no armor, no sword. He admired Cahir’s tenacity, loved him for his devotion as wrong sided as it was. He couldn’t help the love in his chest, he’d have to remember it when he was drowning in his own blood. Julian knew there was no real solution in Song here, it had never truly helped him before. He didn’t belong here, none of them belonged her. He belonged in that golden place, the Valley of Plenty where the moon was a giant honeycomb. That’s where he’d go when he died, from drowning in blood to drowning in honey sweet, sweet, sweet on his tongue.

Cahir had gotten to his feet now. How long did Julian need to last? Renfri and Odessa had planned to meet with them in a week’s time if they could. It had not even been a single day. He needed to delay Cahir, delay the man until Ciri could get far enough away. He needed to slow Cahir down.

“Come along then, try it,” he told Cahir. “I’ve been Singing Songs since before you even had an egg to hatch out of.”

Cahir hunched, ready to strike, ready to lunge.

_”Tangling vine and flow’rs entwining,”_ Julian dodged out of the way at the last second, his heart seeming to bang _oh dear, oh dear, oh dear_ in his chest. “ _Down to earth the body binding.”_

Cahir snarled and jerked, his limbs stiff and unresponsive.

“ _Limbs are lulled by tightening ivy, body still and stiff beside me.”_

He stamped down on Cahir’s hand, a sound like cracking wood under Cahir’s shouts until he got the dagger free. Julian threw it as far as he could into the forest. With his aim it would be lost for the next thousand years. “Ha! Nice try!”

“You could have used that to stab me, moron,” Cahir said from the ground. “Instead of _breaking my hand!”_

Julian jumped in place, slapping himself in the forehead. “Ah! I could have!”

“I mean I’m right here bound to the ground. You could have just stabbed me in the eye.”

“Give me a second!” he said, heading into the brush. 

“Take your time!” Cahir shouted at him, then took his own time to curse at Julian.

“You’re being very good natured about this!” he shouted from where he was kicking at bushes.

“To be honest I’m hoping I can distract you until I can move again.”

Julian almost told him getting loose of the Song was honestly as simple as knowing that what was happening wasn’t really, but given the circumstances, he wasn’t sure he should share that information.

“You’re a better Singer than me, but I can beat you in combat. It’s just a matter of getting the upper hand,” Cahir told him.

“I mean it’s not personal!” Julian called from the brush. “It’s honestly nothing against you. If I had my way you’d just go along your merry way!”

“Then why not let me go?” Cahir called back.

“Because I care about Ciri and she deserves more than to be turned into a tool. People aren’t tools – or rather they are but they shouldn’t have to be, Aha!” he pulled up on something that looked to be a handle but turned out to be some kind of bone. 

“You found it?” Cahir called back.

“No, I think it’s some kind of femur?”

“Is that I kind of rat?”

“It’s a kind of leg bone!” Julian shouted back. “Or arm bone?” There were other bones all piled up. He briefly hoped for some kind of dagger amongst the mess, but there was just cloth and a hole in the ground that stunk too much to investigate. He threw the bone over his shoulder and marched back to the road.

Cahir was still on the ground and looking murderous.

“Hello again!” Julian waved to him.

“Go die in a fire,” Cahir told him, which? Fair.

Julian dug through his back until he got out his cloak and walked over to kneel next to Cahir. “Look. Young person. I understand that you had this grand plan to turn Ciri into the scourge of the world and purify it or make it safer for our people or whatever Lish told you, but listen. Ciri is not a weapon. She’s a person. She has the right to make choices and to be what she decides to be. That’s what being an uncle is about. It’s not about weaponization. It’s about helping one’s hatching find themselves, feel out the chambers of their heart, and nothing about what you’ve said makes me feel like that’s what you want for her. Ordering her around like that, Pft,” he jerked his shoulders in a bit of performative amusement as he gathered his cloak up into a bundle. “I wish someone had been that for you. A chance for you to find yourself, to become yourself. You are more than a soldier with a bird on his head. And so before I smother you to death I want you to know that I think you would have made a fine cuckoo. Under the right tutelage you would be magnificent. Look at how determined you are! How clever!”

He smiled down at Cahir who stared up at him with a blank face. “I don’t need pretty words, I know I’m an abomination.”

Jaskeir reached out, his hand on Cahir’s shoulder. “You are no such thing. You’re a cuckoo. _You’re a miracle of survival, the pinnacle of persistence.”_

Cahir stared up at him.

“I don’t suppose you believe this, but I care about you,” Julian told him. “It’s my curse, but no less true. I care about you Cahir. And I’m sorry it had to be this way. It’s just that I’m Ciri’s uncle first, before anything. And even if it kills me, I have to keep her safe, I have to guard and guide her as best as I can.”

Cahir started taking deeper and deeper breaths as Julian cupped the back of his head and brought the cloak to his face.

“It’s going to be alright, Cahir,” he said, just as there was a roar from the wood. Even without Geralt’s encyclopedic knowledge of the wilds, he knew a monster when he heard one. “Uh,” Jaskier said. “Today’s just full of twists and turns. So, do you remember that bone I found?”

A great beastie stuck its head out of the woods and roared. Julian abandoned the plan to smother the inconvenience which is Cahir and the insistent persistence that that meant, he didn’t get far when it chomped its teeth around him and threw him further down the road. Turnip and Parsnip, bless them, screamed together, their hooves striking at the earth and then were gone. Julian looked at Cahir frozen on the ground. Who had trained this idiot! Some needed to take him under their wing and properly.   
The monster roared and snapped and jumped at Cahir.

He had a choice to make. It would be so convenient to let the soldier just die like this. Ciri was so afraid of him and Cahir wasn’t the sort to stop. Instinct screamed at him, a Song that raged inside him like the rush of a river flowing. Julian pressed a hand to the wound on his belly, his lovely suit was being ruined, he was feeling lightheaded.

“Cahir!” he shouted. “It’s all in your head! The Song is all in your head!”

Cahir grunted as the monster scrambled at his armor.

“Cahir!” Julian shouted. “You can move! The Song is all in your head!”

With a jolt, Cahir pulled out a dagger and stabbed the creature with it. The soldier rolled to the side, teeth bared. Since Julian had gone so far he might as well go the rest of the way. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he just- Well, he just wasn’t okay with Cahir dying right now. There would always be later.

The soldier was good with his knife, but he was facing off against a monster. “Cahir! Sing after me! My hunger is the whetstone, my will is the knife!”

“My hunger,” Cahir snarled out.

“Sing, from your gut, down in your belly!”

“ _My hunger is the whetstone! My will is the knife!_ ” 

The creature let out a yelp and backed off.

“It cuts me as I clench it. It slices where I sheath it.”

“ _It cuts me as I clench it, it slices where I sheath it!”_ Cahir roared at it. “ _It cuts me as I clench it, it slices where I sheath it!”_ The man had a nice voice, rich and textured, a whiskey shifter of a voice. That was enough to change the monster’s mind and send it running off screaming. Big old thing like that, probably never had the feeling of being cut up like that before.

“Ha!” Cahir shouted as it ran, jubilant. He swung his fist after it like a lion batting after its prey.

Julian fell to his knee with a jolt that turned his insides white with pain, and then collapsed down onto his side and then faltered onto his back.

“Well,” Julian said. Lying on the ground, bleeding, his life a serious of comedy of errors and heart wrenching tragedies. “That was an excitement?”

Cahir stared down at him, covered in guts and blood. It was giving Julian flashbacks. “What is _wrong with you?_ ”

Yes, definitely flashbacks.

“You could have just let that thing kill me! You could have stabbed me to death! You could have Sung me to hold my breath until I died!” Cahir was shouting at him.

Julian tried to blink the blood off his face. “That last one doesn’t work. The person goes unconscious and then they just start breathing again.”

“I thought you wanted me dead!”

Julian’s mouth tasted of blood. “Oh. I do. Or I did. There was no reason to be cruel about it. It was just for Ciri’s sake. We aren’t meant to be here, you know. This isn’t our world, it isn’t meant for us. We survive on a Song and on the whims of chance. We live lean and we help each other. Killing you was a waste, but keeping Ciri safe is my whole purpose right now. Then, I don’t know. Something changed I guess.”

“You’re dying,” Cahir said. “And you didn’t even get to kill me.”

“I didn’t really think I would,” Julian told him, closing his eyes. “I was just buying time. I knew taking Ciri on as my niece might end in my death. Her destiny is tied up with Geralt’s and he is a great man. I knew taking on Ciri meant I was going to have to fight above my weight class. I did well enough I thought. I was going to live so long too, before. I was going to Sing so many Songs. And now I’m never going to know Ciri’s second name. I bet it’s going to be wonderful!”

Cahir took his hand, which Geralt never would have done. The soldier did it poorly, too loose and yet too tight. Like no one had held the boy’s hand before. Julian squeezed his fingers with his own.

Julian smiled at him. “Please let her go. Please don’t take her away to Nilfgaard. Let her be her own person.”

“Master Julian. You’re dying,” Cahir said again, staring down at him.

“Will you sing me your Song?” Julian asked him. The edges of his vision were going a bit gold.

Cahir shook his head.

Julian squeezed his hand. “It’s alright.”

Shaking his hand again, Cahir stared down at him. “It’s ugly, it’s wretched. You wouldn’t like it.”

Disappointment landed on his chest like a buzzard. “Very well,” he said, smile tacky with blood. “I’ll Sing you mine.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late guys! I got real cute and got pink eye and so I've been having eye adventures. (Also I rewrote the first part of this chapter at least a million times.) Enjoy!

Yennifer was in the unenviable position of understanding the rectoress’ attitude about everything. Her chaos was dangerously low, she’d been forced to walk quite a long way, and the innkeeper appeared to be of that conniving variety who always thought he was clever enough for some scheme or the other when in fact he was simply _irritating._

“You sure I don’t know you from somewhere?” the innkeeper said with slightly different inflection than he had the twelve other times he’d said exactly the same thing.

“I don’t see how the two of us would cross paths,” she told him and could hear Tissaia in every syllable. Distasteful.

A spritely figure bounced in from the side, wearing some kind of odd instrument with a triangular base and a soft green cap pinning down her curls, up close she could see the bardling had used some kind of powder to alter the shape of her face. She strummed a couple of notes that warmed her like whiskey – a drowsy drifting feeling. “Perhaps you do, sir. I almost didn’t recognize her out of the classroom! This is Madame Roza of Madame Roza’s Finishing School for Young Ladies,” the girl – bardling? – said. “You’ve heard of it, of course.” Clever, clever girl. Not that Yennifer needed the help. “The rose gardens are famous. I’m not much one for embroidery and flower arranging, but the music room,” she placed her hands on her heart. “A dream to play. You must recognize her from her esteemed school of etiquette.”

The bardling, to her credit, had been well trained in acting. She’d gone from being invisible, absent, to letting out an energetic stream of speech that was too much for the poor innkeeper’s tiny brain to handle. A skilled liar like herself could see the borrowed personality the bard had pulled over herself, perhaps the energetic cacophony of whatever bard trained her. Were groups of bards called a college? Or was she thinking of something else? She vaguely remembered that there was a murder of crows, a pack of wolves, and a college of bards.

“Finishing School?” the innkeeper stuttered out.

“Of course he wouldn’t have heard of it, dear,” Yennifer said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “This is too far North.”

He considered them. “What are you doing up here then?”

“A fundamental part of etiquette is knowing when one should excuse oneself,” Yennifer said, and could see the innkeeper swallow the story whole. “We thought it was best to send the girls home and depart ourselves before the Nilfgaardians arrived. Something told us they wouldn’t be interested in the finer points of high tea.”

That made the innkeeper laugh even though he was clearly a man who had no idea what high tea even was. “No, I suppose not.”

“Your finest wine,” she told him. “And something to eat, please.”

The bardling spoke to the innkeeper before doing a little hopping skip of a jump to turn in a way that jiggled at her memory in an aggravating vague way. The bardling was younger than she was acting. Her doublet was as well-made as it was well-worn and cast her eyes toward green. Her short brown hair curled out across her forehead and temples. There was a distinct look to her that was as specific as it was unremarkable. The bardling skipped after her, all the way to Yennifer’s table and sat across from her. Yennifer was not interested in being a nursemaid.

Yennifer blinked at her. Usually that dismissal was enough to discourage people. The bardling was not concerned, she only smiled back.

The food, when it was delivered, was not up to her usual standards, but it was food. The tavern’s best wine, which seemed to be a mixture of grape dregs and lamp oil. Still. She needed to regain her strength. The bardling took a sip of the ale set in front of her and then promptly let it fall back out of her mouth.

“So, I’ve had ale many times before of course,” the girl said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Yennifer answered.

“So I’d obviously know if this was what ale was supposed to taste like.”

“It’s not,” Yennifer told her.

“Of course not!” the girl said with far too much enthusiasm.

“I’m just here to eat and rest,” Yennifer said.

“Don’t let me stop you,” the girl said and remained where she was.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

The girl shrugged. “When there are more people I’ll perform.” She dropped coin on the table, what Yennifer paid for her room and meal. “That’s what’s paying for our room and such. He’ll try to renege, I’ve met innkeepers like him before, but I’ve seen my uncle handle them.”

The girl was out of her league, Yennifer thought, but took her money back anyway. 

“I know who you are,” the girl said. The sort of nonsequitur of someone limited on time.

“Do you?” Yennifer let her fingers flex, preparing for a spell.

“You’re one of the greatest sorceresses to ever live,” her eyes sparkled as she said it.

“That’s quite a bit of flattery,” Yennifer said. She tore off another piece of bread and tried to chew through it.

“Is it flattery if it’s true? I have a bit of a proposal for you. I’m sure a clever woman like you knows what a symbiotic relationship is,” the girl’s fingers tapped softly over the strings of her strange instrument.

“Something for someone who needs someone else,” Yennifer said.

“Very close, most excellent lady.” There was something familiar to the way the bardling spoke, as though it was a sort of performance she had just begun to learn. Everything sunshine and roses. The bardling’s eyes were canny almost to a fault and haunted around the edges like fear was a fog seeping out from under her window sills. “It is a state for two creatures who can do each other good. Somehow I have a feeling that if you were up to full strength you wouldn’t be here eating this. Which means that you and I can help each other.”

“Not interested,” Yennifer said. She didn’t need the help of a child. She didn’t want the responsibility of one either.

The bardling shrugged. “Who’s to say? Maybe you will be. I’ll still be taking care of your room and meal as a sign of good intentions.”

Yennifer went up to her room as soon as she could, sparing a little magic to kill whatever vermin were hiding in the pile of straw they called a bed. How had she gotten here? Was she willing to do this for a legacy? Sleeping in a filthy inn with nothing but the pack on her back and almost depleted chaos. There was the sound downstairs of music and clapping. Maybe she shouldn’t have left the girl down there. No, the girl could take care of herself. She was in enough danger from the Brotherhood and Nilfgaard already without taking in orphans and ragamuffins. She fell asleep to the sound of soft singing floating up the stairs.

When she went downstairs in the morning the bardling was gone and the innkeeper slept at the bar. Yennifer wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She was on the road out of town when a horse pulled up beside her with the bardling riding. It had all the carriage of a warhorse, a sort of straight neck and tight posture to it and the parts of its tack that remained looked suspiciously Nilfgaardian in color and texture. It was a lovely gray creature with his face all freckled, its long mane jet black.

Yennifer looked up at her for a moment and kept walking.

The bardling just sighed, sliding off with less grace than Yennifer would have expected. 

“You,” the bardling said, pointing at Yennifer. “You should be resting, not walking long distances. Up on the horse.”

Yennifer looked to the bardling and then the horse. “No thank you.”

“Yes, thank you,” the bardling told her. “You look very capable, but you’re traveling too slow.”

“I’m fine, thank you. You can go,” Yennifer told her.

“Your posture’s too good,” the bardling told her, rolling her eyes as if Yennifer were the child. “Everyone’s going to think you’re a lady on the run. And now is not a great time to be a noble. The general folk will hate you because they’ll think you lived off their labor and then ran off, or they’ll think they can rob you. Either way it will draw attention. You need someone to travel with you to make you look like someone who just happens to have nice shoes, and I need to travel with someone. Sure you could use your magic, but if you had that much to spare you wouldn’t be walking.”

Yennifer looked her over. “Why make such a generous offer?”

“This is not a good time to travel alone.” The Bardling hesitated for a moment. “I was trying to get to the Count de Stael’s castle. An uncle works there. Or worked there. The place is essentially abandoned. My uncle is going to fetch me in four days or thereabouts. I have an aunt in Rosenrot. I can stay with her. I just need to travel with someone until then so no one gets the clever idea that I’m an easy target.”

“A different uncle?” Yennifer asked.

“I have a few,” Bardling demurred. She waved at Yennifer again. “Come along, you and the horse will suit. You both look like you can barely stand us mere mortals.”

The horse looked down his nose at her and that was really enough. She approached the horse, it really was even taller than it looked. Bardling executed some kind of lifting maneuver with a grunt. “We need to get you fed,” Bardling said. “You might weigh as much as I do. A great fine lady like you wasting away is a crime.”

“Hmp,” Yennifer said, refusing to be flattered or cossetted.

“One last thing,” Bardling said, pulling worn strips of leather from her pack and wrapping them around Yennifer’s shoes.

“That looks terrible,” Yennifer declared. 

“That looks like your shoes are falling apart. No one worth being robbed has shoes that are falling apart. And a sorceress would definitely never herself to look anyway but her best. I’d rip the hem of your dress, but you might strike me dead.” 

Yennifer sighed at her then reached down and tore at the hem of her dress herself. “I can always fix it later.”

Bardling put the lead in Yennifer’s hand with a grin and started off in front of them, strumming whatever her triangular lute thing was.

“I’m keeping the horse!” Yennifer told her.

“Good!” Bardling shouted back over her shoulder with a wink. “He was getting too attached anyway.”

The bardling, noisy creature that she was, was a liability and smart-mouthed to boot. And she wouldn’t stop playing.

“Do you take requests?” Yennifer finally asked.

Bardling turned with a look of surprise on her face, “Um, well. If I know it. My training isn’t complete yet.”

“I’d like some silence please, just some pure, blissful silence,” Yennifer told her.

“There’s no such thing,” Bardling called back.

“What?”

“When there is pure silence you can hear your heartbeat in your ears like a thunderstorm,” Bardling made a motion around her ear. Yennifer could have just ridden off. Could have just left the bardling behind. And yet.

“-and tell me love, tell me love, how is that just-” the bardling sang, the song landing heavy in her heart. Geralt could have destroyed her. He said such sweet words, offered such counterfeit promises. She’d thought he would understand what it meant to be different, to be mocked and made into an Other. In the end, he was like every other dull and wretched man who believed a beautiful woman was someone to be corralled into something, to be broken into a bridle. He hadn’t known her before, and if he had she doubted he would choose her. What it was to be important to a man, to be special and yet be beneath his sword, to be beneath his horse who knew to take a bit and do what she was told.

“We’re stopping for lunch,” she told the bardling.

They sat on the grass and ate cheese and bread. The warhorse nibbled its grass in controlled little bites and then stood guard over them with a disinterest dignity. Yennifer watched him. “Does he have a name?” she asked the bardling.

“Probably,” the bardling shrugged. She sat all curled in on herself as though without music she had nothing to keep her upright. 

She approached the horse with slow steps, but he was unbothered by her slipping the bit out from between his teeth and altering his harness into something a little more comfortable. He looked like the sort of creature comfortable with the pain and pressure of it, which was all the more reason to get rid of the bit altogether. “Well, since he’s our companion now, I say he deserves a better name.” 

The bardling sat up a little. “A second name.”

“Yes,” Yennifer put a finger to her chin to mime thinking. “He’s very dignified. Perhaps too much so. And he’s of course incredibly strong and handsome.”

The horse stood up a little taller as if it knew it was being talked about.

"My uncle says that the names of plants and animals are stronger,” the bardling told her.

Yennifer stroked her hand down the horse's neck. "His name with be Amaranth. Amaranth the Wonderful. Amaranth of the North.”

Amaranth lowered his head to press his forehead to her shoulder. She let out a huff laughter. She could see the appeal of having a horse of one’s own.

***

Odessa and Renfri were intimidating. They move together like a single unit, the way that long trained soldiers might. It was more obvious from behind, the way their bodies moved at the same rhythm, breathed at the same rhythm. They were passing a farmhouse when Odessa came to a stop and Renfri stopped at almost the same moment.

“That’s Parsnip and Turnip,” Odessa said. She was looked at an old pair of horses, standing with their necks crossed. Renfri’s brow furrowed, her hand on the hilt of her sword.

Odessa left off her horse, leaving Renfri to lead them out of the road. 

“Should you go with her?” Geralt asked.

“I’m waiting to see who answers the door,” Renfri said, her body poised forward. “I might send you.”

“I’m a witcher,” he told her.

Her eyes were fixed on where Odessa was banging on the door. “I hadn’t noticed.”

An older woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Pardon me, I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just urgent. Where you found those two horses,” her voice had a strange sort of sing-song quality.

“Oh dear,” the woman’s face furrowed with worry. “Are they yours? My daughter found them on the road with their packs still on them. We have all the things that were on them in the barn.”

“Yes, my cousin and niece were traveling on them,” Odessa said.

Geralt leaned toward Renfri, “I thought they were siblings.”

“They were raised together,” she answered.

Renfri leaned forward on her saddle, watching Odessa. The woman reached out and waved at her forward. “Stay here, Geralt. I don’t want this nice lady to freak out at the giant man crowding into her barn.”

It wouldn’t be the first time he had waited outside and he didn’t want any trouble. Besides he could hear everything they were saying. 

“That’s Jaskier’s lute,” Odessa said.

Renfri’s voice in response was low and kind. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“That’s Jaskier’s lute!” Odessa said again, sharper.

Geralt sat up taller on Roach. Jaskier was silly and ridiculous. It very likely did mean something.

“Jaskier is a survivor and for all that he’s a moron he can take care of himself,” Renfri said. “Ma’am please let us pay you for the trouble of keeping the horses and the things.”

“Oh, no, dear. That’s alright,” the old woman said. “To be honest I’d rather just know everyone’s alright. I’ve been worrying about this for the past week.”

A shot of cold went down Geralt’s spine.

“Could your daughter show us where she found the horses?” Odessa asked.

“I-“ the woman faltered. “There have been a lot of Nilfgaardians in the area. They’ve mostly moved on, but I’m not comfortable having my daughter go out into the woods. You three look like you can take care of yourself, but she’s a weaver.”

There was a knot of tension from the barn for a long moment until Odessa replied, “That’s understandable. You’ve already done so much already. We need to go speak to our associate and then if you don’t mind we’ll wait for your daughter to give us some more precise directions.”

“Of course,” the older woman said, sounding relieved.

As the women exited the barn, Renfri curved an arm up around Odessa’s shoulder, reaching up to smooth her hair back. That seemed to at least comfort the woman a little bit. The expression on Odessa’s face shifted like the waves breaking on the shore, fear then fury, resolve and worry. Renfri scratched along Odessa’s hairline with careful fingers.

“We left them,” Odessa said.

Renfri squeezed her again and released her. “The plan didn’t fail. We both drew away soldiers that could have found them. Don’t let yourself go there. We’ll find them.”


	11. Chapter 11

They reached Rosenrot just at the beginning of the setting sun. Bardling kept looking around, her until Yennifer had to pinch her arm to get her to be less obvious. Yennifer wasn’t going to leave Amaranth out on the street like a common plebian. She left strict instructions with the stable hand on how Amaranth was to be tended. He tapped its soft scarred nose against Yennifer’s shoulder like a sort of salute but made no fuss about it. Wherever the bardling stole this horse he’s in love with the Yennifer now. She made a not quite dismissive sound at the horse who stood all the straighter and prouder for it. The bardling hovered by the door all but pulling on her skirts.

The bardling was well trained. She cut through the town toward the tavern like the bow of a ship all the way up to the bar leaving Yennifer to travel behind her. The tavern keeper was a barrel-chested man with a ginger beard, about as expected for a tavern keeper to look except perhaps for a particular sharpness around his eyes. The bardling leaned her elbows on the bar, it made her look terribly young. “Looking for a woman, Belladonna of Cintra. Do you know where she might be?”

“Belladonna?” the innkeeper furrowed his brow in a way that made dread settle in Yennifer’s stomach. “And who are you, ladies?”

“My apologies!” Yennifer swept in. “I’m Madam Roza of Madam Roza’s Finishing School for Fine Ladies. You may have heard of our rose gardens.”

“I’m not much one for flowers,” he said, scratching at his nose.

Bardling tapped her hands in a rhythm on the bar. “Not to interrupt, just have you heard of a Belladonna living in this village?”

“Not in the village, no,” the innkeeper said. “She used to live out by the Petrux farm. Her body was burned about a month ago with her little apprentice. She was a witch. It would have gone better for her if she hadn’t went and killed the party of men sent after her and her apprentice. Fourteen men there were. Have you seen the size of this town? We can’t spare fourteen men. His Lordship sent some soldiers when none of the men returned and they slew the evil creature where she hid in the woods along with her ghastly apprentice.” He nodded over to where a small group of soldiers was sitting in the corner.

Bardling’s hands tightened on the bar, her nails cutting runnels in the wood. Her smile was wide and bright as sunlight through a shutter – all beams and bars. If there hadn’t seemed to be something more than normal about the girl before there was definitely something now.

“How brave of them,” Yennifer said, tilting her neck up so her soft skin caught the glow of the lantern light. The tavern keeper looked away from the girl to stare at Yennifer’s cleavage because of course he did. Yennifer considered burning the tavern down with everyone inside. Maybe she would just for the pleasure of it. This town was a piss stain on the map anyway.

“Why were you asking after her?” the tavern keeper leaned forward.

“We’d received correspondence from her, asking about growing rose bushes,” Yennifer sighed, faint magic moving in her voice. “We used to have such beautiful bushes at the school. We were hoping she could offer us a place to stay, not many people are willing to pay for embroidery lessons on the road.”

“Well,” the innkeeper said to Yennifer’s chest. “You seem like a fine lady. If your bard there will sing a few songs I’ll let you stay in one of the rooms upstairs.”

They couldn’t, they absolutely couldn’t. It was too ghastly.

Bardling laughed, her eyes sparkling with something. “Of course!”

Yennifer grabbed her arm tight. “Of course not my dear. You must rest your voice.”

“It’s alright,” the girl said. There was something about her manner, as though Bardling had sunk entirely into the character of someone else, like an actor on a stage. The imitation was familiar, for the slant of her shoulders to the dip of her head. The eyes though were all her own and had some message in them she couldn’t decipher. “This is what a bard does. Sing for their supper.”

Yennifer remembered Bardling coming to sit at her table. Asking about symbiotic relationships. Trying to find someone to travel with. This girl was in danger. Bardling grabbed hold of her hand before she could raise it and do… something. She was just smiling, like a doll, while her eyes burned like fire. “That’s very generous but we should be moving on.”

“No,” Bardling’s eyes burned bright. “You go upstairs and let me sing these nice people a song.”

There was nothing Yennifer could do to force it as much as she found it distasteful, and too much of a fuss would only draw attention. If the child was so determined to be miserable, then she was welcome to it. She held out her hand for the key. It was not her job to take care of headstrong children.

“I tried,” Yennifer snapped at the empty room, dropping her bag by the bed. “If that girl wants to entertain the people who killed her aunt that’s her choice.” She wished she hadn’t been so hasty to head upstairs. She didn’t have anything since lunch and wanted to save her provisions. She just finished talking her way up and then back down again when there was a knock at the door. 

“Madam Roza?” came a young voice at the door. “I have your dinner. Your bath water is still heating up. It should be ready by the time you finish eating.”

The sound of strumming started from downstairs. “ _Tragic widow dressed in roses, crowned in poise and all refinement. In the hollow of the mountain, lovely ladies gather ‘round her taught to grow in their own power. When the moon was full and bright they walked out in the silvery night-“_ she heard before the door closed, muffling the sound.

“Come in,” she declared. Reveling as much as hating how much she sounded like Tissaia. For a moment she was two women. One was the woman who gave up the easy road family to play the game of beauty that was demanded of women in order to get the power she wanted. Her other self was born beautiful and intelligent, she worked her way from tutor to governess to instructor to headmistress. She had decided not to marry – no, she had married and her beloved was formal and gentle. 

The woman who brought in her dinner did it with the self-conscious care of someone trying to be well-mannered when they’d barely even seen a manner before in their life. Yennifer sat at the table and the woman dithered a moment before setting the plate in front of her. The food was plain, but had been plated well. She folded a large handkerchief into a triangle and placed it in her lap, the woman looked on with the appropriate amount of awe. 

“She has a nice voice, your bard,” the woman said. “And she’s very charming. She’ll make some coin I don’t doubt.”

“She’s a gifted young lady,” replied Yennifer with a round and rolling tone.

“Are you really a widow?” the woman asked as if it was a secret.

“Some women are,” she answered. She could see that poor dear husband of hers in her mind. He’d had bad eyes and was a little embarrassed of his spectacles, though she had thought they made him look studious. He listened to her the way the forest listened to the wind, the way an echo listens for sound. 

“Weren’t you left with nothing?” the woman asked. “How did it happen?”

Yennifer sucked in a breath, her hand pressing to her chest for a moment. What a strange and sorrowful burst of feeling.

How had her poor husband died? What tragedy had befallen him. He’d been gutted by a monster in the woods and she stabbed the creature in the eye with the broach her mother had given her. She could see it in her head as if in a dream. Her scream of rage, the roses in her hair, the blood on his lips, the post of the broach driven into the creature’s brain. He had told her he loved her with red, red lips before she smothered him to death with her petticoats to relieve his pain. He had stared at her the whole time like she was the last thing he wanted to see before dying.

“Apologies,” she said, voice formal. 

The woman’s face crumpled in sympathy instead of resentment or anger. The woman reached out to touch her shoulder in a moment of sisterly commiseration, her face gone soft and kind with understanding. She’d wanted to be other people before, more beautiful or more powerful – that was about the same thing for a woman. She’d never just thought of herself a few steps to the left. Exactly herself, but in different circumstances. How easy it would be to shrug off the hand, to eschew the weakness. But did it make her weak? Did it cost her anything to sit as a woman facing a woman sharing the language of their gender with a look? How inexpensive to receive kindness.

What a beautiful terrible life she never had. How terrible and wonderful to be a different self.

The woman pulled back her hand and did something that could have been a curtsy. She could have scoffed at the woman, could have raised an eyebrow of derision. But why? Yennifer had never considered it before. That maybe there didn’t need to be eels in pools, maybe they didn’t need to cut themselves apart. The world was no less an open maw waiting for teeth, but if it was then why did she need to suffer more?

The woman left and Yennifer looked at her food. She’d eaten worse. 

As soon as she’d been affected by the moment of gentleness she’d moved past it. It wasn’t her responsibility to feel for every person who was too stupid to know better. She had already learned how not to let her emotions get the better of her. The thought of another self rolled over her like a melody that had faded out again at the end. It was just a moment of a dream, a someone else, a might have been. She wasn’t emotionally involved.

This whole village should be burnt to the ground, but it wasn’t her responsibility to do it. Monsters died every day, even ones that weren’t really monsters at all.

The noise from downstairs got louder and more cheerful, the bardling’s voice rising and rolling. Her bath was brought up a short time later, the water steaming, the maids acting with more deference than even she usually received. 

The little bard’s voice carried clear and bright up the stairs. It was an excellent voice, warm. It wasn’t unpleasant to listen to, and the effect of it seemed to have a beneficial effect on their wallet. Yennifer hadn’t realized how worn down she’d begun to feel since started their mission. She wondered how worn down she appeared. Things had been a blur since Sodden Hill. She felt like she had been asleep for a very long time. Had just been doing things instead of thinking about them. It was time to be done with moping. When her road weariness and the strain on her eyes got to be too much she slept and tried to only think about tomorrow.

Yennifer woke in the night in the throws of something too sad to even be called a nightmare. Her pillow was wet beneath her cheek. She didn’t know what she had been dreaming. There was the slow lap of the waves on her feet, the setting of sun, and an overwhelming feeling of grief. There was still the sound of the bardling’s voice downstairs and the smell of magic in the air. Yennifer pulled in the chaos from the air around her as a sort of shield. There was a catharsis to the sorrow she felt a comfort, like a half-remembered story retold. There was an allowance to it. It was what she once thought dying would be like, a slow sinking deeper and deeper into some soft gray place where it cost nothing to give in. A universal hollow she could fall into that would not think her weak, that didn’t conceive as weakness. There was a magic in the bardling’s voice. She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t noticed before. The magic must have been subtle. She was very gifted, or very well trained, or both.

As much as the bardling probably belonged in Aretuza, she absolutely did not. Her magic was a strange subtle thing to be swallowed down like stones in the belly, to be breathed like mist, to be felt like a memory. There was so much potential in her. Yennifer decided she would be training the bardling herself. Yennifer had it in her to desire the world, to embrace the sanest madness all wild winds and burning fire. Aretuza had suited her in a way that said more about her than it should. Maybe the bardling would have found success there once, but now the world had changed. She was rocked to sleep by the soft ebb and flow of the music.

She woke in the morning to the sound of the bardling packing their bags. Presumptuous, but they should get moving. The bardling looked tired, like she’d been up most of the night singing. When the bardling saw she was awake she stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder. 

“Did you play all night?” Yennifer asked her.

There was something electric about the bardling, a snapping in the air, a wildness just sated under the surface. “I was hungry,” she answered, which answered nothing. “Don’t eat or drink anything here. We’ll need to eat from our packs.”

Good for the bardling for poisoning the well. She dressed with the sort of speed that came from living on the road and prepared themselves to leave. No sooner though had she opened the door to the room when a gray-haired soldier almost knocked her over running down the stairs and out the door.

There was a sort of murmur from downstairs, an unease. Yennifer bellied up to the bar to settle accounts with the innkeeper. She had no interest to be chased down with accusations of theft.

“No breakfast?” the innkeeper asked, there was something a little pained in his expression.

“I’m afraid not,” Yennifer told him. “We should continue on our journey.”

“How disappointing. I was hoping we would have sex before you left,” the innkeeper said from where he stood right next to the woman who’d brought her dinner last night, he looked wide-eyed and harried.

Yennifer raised an eyebrow. “Well.”

“I know about him sleeping with guests,” the woman, must be his wife, said. “Honestly it’s a relief not to have him in my bed.”

Yennifer blinked at the two of them. One of the tavern maids ran sobbing out of the kitchens and out of the door of the inn.

“Mona!” the innkeeper rebuked his wife. The wife for her part had an expression that had circled around so wildly into terror that she had a sort of mad courage about her.

The bardling was being particularly quiet with her thumbs hooked into the strap of her bag.

A man at one of the tables stood up so quickly the bench he’d been sitting on fell over. “How could you say that to me!”

Oh, oh my. Impressive. And perhaps too showy. Some kind of truth spell then.

“What happened to that woman, Belladonna?” Yennifer asked the couple trying hard not to look at each other.

“Farmer Petruz wanted her land, but she refused to sell,” the innkeeper said. “I think everyone knows deep down she wasn’t really a witch. All she’d do was garden and play that harp of hers. But Petruz is such a good customer I didn’t want to upset him and she never had anything to do with me. That’s the way the world works. Sometimes a woman burns and a man has extra coin to spread around.”

Yennifer hated this town.

The lady innkeeper turned to her husband. “Sometimes I despise you so much I don’t know if I want to kill you or myself.”

Yennifer took the bardling by the forearm. “I think it’s time we leave.”

Whatever the bardling had done, it was spreading. Shouts were bursting out from the houses in town. People looking angry and fearful were bursting out of houses.

“Very clever and very foolish,” Yennifer hissed at her. “They just killed your aunt for being a witch, what do you think they would do to you.”

“They won’t know,” the bardling insisted.

Yennifer shook her arm. “What you did is dangerous and irresponsible.”

The bardling looked hurt for a moment before her jaw turned to steel. “Something had to be done and I did it. What else should I have done? Destroyed the village? Called down a plague or a storm? Everyone is still alive. Everything is fine. Let’s get Amaranth and go.”

Yennifer seriously considering abandoning her. She was still determined to teach the girl. After a moment of irritation, she dragged the girl after her to the stables. “Did you at least put a time limit on this spell of yours?”

“No,” the bardling answered. “Anyone who eats the crops grown here has to tell the whole truth. There isn’t a time limit on it. No more false accusations, just accountability. At least it’s an opportunity to change and be better.”

“Who are you to chose that for them?”

“They chose that for themselves when they killed something good.”

“You’re a child,” Yennifer said. She didn’t know why she was so angry all of a sudden. “This is the way the world works. Woman are burned and men get rich. There’s no point in getting involved.”

“No, it’s not,” the bardling said almost under her breath. “It doesn’t have to be.”

Yennifer didn’t speak one more word to the girl as Amaranth was retrieved and they exited the ruckus of a town that suddenly found themselves unbearably honest. The bardling employed a silence that was far more petulant, her posture stiff when she walked. If the bardling was going to be taught than Yennifer was going to have to put a stop to this nonsense immediately. The forest loomed in front of them, dark and heavy. If Yennifer was going to leave the bardling behind, or if the bardling wanted to abandon her, this would be the place. It seemed the road in had acquired itself a guardian. The gray-haired soldier who had almost ran her down this morning paced back and forth beside the road. Blood smeared around the old soldier’s lips from biting at his lips. 

Yennifer stopped Amaranth beside him, her hands clenched in his reins. She shouldn’t ask, it wasn’t her business “Are you the one of the soldiers who killed Belladonna?”

The soldier made a sort of coughing gagging sound. “Belladonna is alive.”

The bardling circled around Amaranth, her hand resting on the horse’s neck. “Belladonna is alive?”

The soldier made that odd coughing sound again. “I helped her fake her death because her apprentice is my son and I love him more than anything. He is my little lark, the only joy in my life. No one knew, his mother was a widow in town. I delivered the body of one of the men Donna killed as well as a lamb all wrapped up. I gave her all the money I had and my horse. I don’t know where she is, but I can’t be in town because I can’t help tell the truth,” the soldier took a sharp, agonized breath.

Yennifer turned to look at the bardling, but she only smiled. “Have you considered leaving the town then?”

“I can’t, I serve Lord Lysander. I can’t abandon my duty.”

She laughed down at him. “I don’t see why not.”

“I wouldn’t expect a woman to understand honor,” he said.

“Is this what you call honor?” Yennifer asked him. “Hiding in the woods because you couldn’t kill the innocent woman and child he sent you to kill?”

“I’ve built my life around a very specific definition of honor,” the soldier told, looking surprised at what was coming out of his mouth. “I’m not ready to accept any changes to my philosophy.”

The bardling was considering him with an odd curiosity that didn’t seem quite human. There was the way she leaned forward from the shoulders as if her human shape was not quite the one the girl was used to. It struck a familiar chord with Yennifer again, a familiar song right on the tip of her tongue. “That’s your choice to make,” the bardling said. “The curse is attached to the food of the town. Don’t eat food from this place and eat outside of the limits of the town and you should be quite fine.”

Yennifer looked down at her. The girl’s smile was more knowing than it was smug. She’d rather it was one than the other. “Come along, child. We should take our own advice and leave.”

***

There was so much blood on the road. The scent was old, but Jaskier had been here – so had at least one other person as well. There was the scent of a creature, stinking with rot and blood. It had to be a leucrota. What was it doing out here?

“You have a better nose than us,” Renfri said.

Odessa had brought her lute around in front of herself, her fingers poised on the strings.

“He was here. Others too, I don’t know their scent.” The tension that had been bleeding out of him racked back up again. “It’s been days, the tracks are obscured.”

“Odessa?” Renfri turned to the bard.

“The Countess de Stael is up ahead. From there it’s about a day and a half ride to Rosenrot, Aunt Belladonna is there. She’s a formidable woman. If Ciri was on the run she’d try for one of those two places,” Odessa told them. “If Julian was alright he would have taken them to Belladonna, but if Ciri was traveling alone she’d try to find a companion to protect her.”

“The Nilfgaardian army is ahead,” Geralt warned her.

Odessa looked down at him, her mouth pulled up at the corner for a moment. “Renfri and I are a good team. We understand if it’s too much risk. You don’t have to go with us.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Geralt snapped, then stopped himself. “I’m going with you. I want to help.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late, between work assignments and eye troubles I had to put things off. Hope you enjoy!

There is a sound of singing coming down the road, soft and raspy. Triss looked up from where she’d been gathering. She crouched down low, her hand tightening on her basket. She doubted the Brotherhood would send someone singing after her. Tissaia had told her to be very careful, they still didn’t know who they could trust. The cabin she’d been working in was in running distance. There was something in the singing that stopped her. There was something golden and intoxicating in it.

A man stepped into the meadow carrying what appeared to be a dead body wrapped in a cloak. She couldn’t have helped starting at the dreadful dichotomy, the golden song and the hand hanging bled out pale with the fingers painted black with blood. She was so startled by it that for a moment she didn’t realize the man carrying the body was in Nilfgaardian armor. Starting with a silent shout she turned to run.

She needed to get away. Back to Aretuza, or to her own kingdom. Before Triss could portal away, a hand clenched in her hair. There was the tangle, the pinpricks of pain that widened her eyes and made her gasp, then she was off her feet to be slammed back onto the ground. 

“Triss Marigold,” the soldier said. There was blood and gore on his face in a constellation of freckles across one cheek.

She raised a hand, to push him back. The pinch and press of his gauntlet tightened around her wrist, pinning it up by her shoulder.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He spoke with a manic earnestness that felt very young, very dangerous. He had already hurt her. “Look at me. Look at me.” 

“I-” she started. She could feel the grass against her cheek, in her hair, under the pressure points of her shoulders.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated. His eyes were wide, staring into hers. “You’re a healer. There’s an injured man, you’re going to heal him. I’ll pay whatever price, whatever you want.”

She turned her face to look at where the body had been laid among the blossoms. Against the grass, there was the slightly darker green of the soft doublet sleeve of a courtier or performer. Nested in the cloak was a crescent of marble pale skin, soft brown hair, the sweep of dark eyelashes.

The soldier let her go. “He’s dying.”

“He’s dead,” she said, even as she turned up on her knees to crawl over to him. There was a softness to the features that revealed themselves.

“He’s alive,” the soldier snarled with a ferocity that frightened her.

“I don’t have everything I need, I need potions, herbs-”

“Do what you can for him,” the soldier insisted. He pulled off his gauntlet to reach his bare hand toward her. “I know chaos can be limiting. If you have to, take from me, do it. He can’t die. Buy him time enough to get the proper care.”

“That might kill you,” she told him. “That might kill me.”

“If you do nothing, I’ll kill you anyway,” he told her. So much for not meaning her any harm. She had experience with men who meant her no harm.

She swallowed and pulled back the cloak to reveal more of the man’s face. Air puffed soft and slow against the inside of her wrist. His heartbeat fluttered thread thin inside his ribs. Against all appearances, the man had held onto life somehow. More by miracle and immobility than by any other means. He was as close as a man could be to death without being a corpse, she had never met anyone closer. Her professional curiosity had been whetted but not satisfied.

When Triss pulled back the cloak she was struck by the immediate memory of honey on her tongue, so sweet to almost be drugging. It was a happy laughing memory of sticky fingers and sticky lips. She could almost smell it, almost taste it. The man was not a soldier, he looked silk soft. He was pale, almost bloodless, the structure of his body crushed and crumpled. Whatever the Nilfgaardian soldier had done, this poor man as likely as not had been dragged into it.

She pressed one hand to the man’s chest and one hand to the grass, she wouldn’t take the lifeforce from another person. She just needed to get him steady enough to last getting to the cabin. Her magic felt its way into his broken open belly, knitting together the wounds there, putting blood in his veins. The man’s eyes flickered with restless behind his eyelids. He had been so close to death for so long.

There was normally a sort of give and take when healing. Sometimes the body was desperate to be healed, at times it was so far gone her magic couldn’t pull it back. The man’s body was simply there, neither helping, nor hindering. There was something absent about him, like the man himself had departed somehow – like part of him had traveled to some other sphere. It took time and energy and chaos. The soldier for his part didn’t rush her, only knelt and sang. The tune of it flowed through her into and out of the injured man. “ _-honeycomb and golden loam to spread across the rolling hills, there in the valley deep and wide is dandelions and daffodils-”_

“He’s been stabilized.” She felt tired. Whatever that odd feeling had been, he had healed like a man in body. Hopefully, he’d eventually come back into himself. “He’d still in a very delicate condition. He lost a lot of blood. We need to get him back to my cabin.”

The soldier just crouched beside the man, his face blank and absent in a way that chilled her. His face turned pained as he picked the man up in his arms. “When will he wake?”

She sat back on her heels to consider him. “He’ll wake when he’s ready. It’s a miracle that he survived. Is he a friend of yours?”

“No,” he dropped the word at her feet like a stone into a deep pit. 

She bit her lip for a moment. There were so many ways that could be interpreted. The soldier obviously cared for the man in some capacity. “I’m sure you-”

He looked at her, the movement sharp, like a serpent’s. “I promised any payment you wanted if you helped him. I meant what I said.”

Triss nodded, standing with him. One caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.

“You should have asked me how I knew who you were and where to find you,” the soldier said. “You haven’t even asked what my name is.”

Her belly went cold. “Should I know what your name is?”

He huffed out a laugh. “Maybe not. I’ve been given a lot of freedom to fulfill the duties I’ve been assigned, but I may have just deserted.”

“I’m not here to judge,” she told him, voice low and smooth. “How did you know where I was?”

“Nilfgaard has spies in the Brotherhood,” he answered. “We know where many of your safehouses are.”

A shiver went up her spine. She needed to get the man to a place where he could go through the process of healing on his own, and then she needed all the information she could get out of the soldier. “It can’t be.”

“Everyone has a cost. A price that buys their honor or something they care about enough to be exploited.”

Triss looked at the soldier’s face out of the corner of her eye. Whoever the injured man was she had a suspicion he was both to the soldier. “I fought at Sodden Hill,” she told him.

“So did I,” he told her, his expression giving away no anger, no remorse. His voice was low and raspy. “It was a means to an end.”

“People died,” she said.

“There are much bigger things at stake.”

“Like what?”

The soldier pressed his lips together.

“Nothing for free?” she offered.

One side of the soldier’s mouth quirked up. 

“You said any payment I wanted,” she began, ready to test the waters. “I want information. Who is he?”

“His secrets aren’t mine to tell,” the soldier told her.

“How about some of yours, what your name?”

He gave her a sharp look.

“I’m going to heal him, aren’t I?” She was cautious about pushing too hard. There was a still and latent violence to him, a sheathed sword she was certain was sharp. She was grateful to see the cottage up ahead.

“I’m Cahir.”

She smiled. “Well, Cahir. We’ll get your friend healed in no time.”

“We’re not friends. He was going to kill me,” Cahir told her, voice filled with a gratitude she didn’t understand and couldn’t parse. There was obviously more to it. His mouth twisted for a moment. “I have been a necessary monster my whole life. A useful abomination.”

“Is that why he tried to kill you?” she asked.

“He tried to kill me because of what I did, not what I am.” He turned sideways to walk the man into the cabin, body curling around him with care. “Where should I put him?”

She pointed to the second bedroom. “Through there on the bed.” She took a moment to gather the necessary salves and potions. To center herself. In the other room Cahir had begun to sing, something soft and golden bright. She took a moment to look them over. The side of the man’s lovely doublet had been soaked with blood and shredded. He looked almost pensive so close to death. Thoughtful and pleasant. A good listener. He wasn’t a small man, but there was something about him that was well-contained, harmless. More women had gotten in trouble by judging a man by his looks than could be measured. But. Looking at him there in his own blood, she didn’t believe he’d ever willingly do a cruelty. 

She arranged everything on the bedside table. She had been able to spare a moment, but not more than that. “Open his mouth.”

Cahir crouched down to obey immediately, care in the placement of his fingertips as he opened the man’s mouth. Triss poured in the first potion and flipped the small hourglass on the table. With injuries like this the potions would have to be applied one at a time. When the first series of potions were administered, she turned her head to watch the hourglass. 

“He still may not make it,” she warned.

“He’ll fight his way back,” Cahir told her. “He has people he cares about. He can make it, he just needs to be drawn back.”

“Who is he?” 

He stayed crouched down by the man, there was a sense about him that he’d be kneeling if it wouldn’t be such an inadvisable position. The hourglass continued its slow drip. “I would put him at risk if I told you.”

“The question is for me, I won’t tell anyone else.”

There was a sense sometimes about someone, that all they needed was a nudge to tell the truth they were eager to tell anyway. Cahir let out a sigh of air. “I made a mistake. I think I made a mistake. I was told things about how the world worked and I surrounded myself with people that only made me believe it more. I just wanted to know. I just wanted to crack the world open and see what’s inside it, but I believed what I was told instead of trying to find out myself.”

Triss watched him and watched the hourglass. Triss wished Yennifer was here, she’d know how to exploit the situation well, to put the soldier in his place

“I don’t think the world deserves to be destroyed after all. I almost ruined everything and he was kind to me anyway. I’m a monster and he was kind to me.”

Triss’ hand tightened and loosened at her side. “I don’t trust you, I still want to help you.”

“That’s wise.” His answering smile was dry and pulled up on one side like he was going out of practice. “I know more about what he is than who he is; ageless and powerful. I couldn’t tell you how old he is, only that he’s been changing the destiny of nations for decades. He has the ability to change minds and hearts. To do things even your kind can’t manage. He doesn’t belong here. This world is too cruel for him, the best things are too vulnerable.” 

Triss blinked at him and down at the man.

Cahir clenched his jaw, eyes moving as he thought of how to say it. “He’s- I don’t know how to explain it without explaining too much. He told me people aren’t weapons, that they aren’t tools. That they have a right to choose. I thought I understood things. I don’t understand anything. He said I was a miracle of survival and I believed him. I believe that he believed it. I want to understand.”

She didn’t know what to make of that. It went against what she sensed, it went against her experience. It was time for the second dose. “Open his mouth,” she said.

***

Yennifer was not entirely sure what to do with the bardling. The girl had cursed an entire town and seemed none the worse for it. She had been thinking about where she could take the girl to teach her properly. The Brotherhood was out, Tissaia was certain to not understand. Certainly, Yennifer could teach the girl herself.

Bardling walked alongside Amaranth with her fingers moving back and forth over the string. “-flies at angles in the air.” The girl frowned and moved her fingers again. “Flies at angles in the air. Fleeter than- No. Fleet as- Hmm.” There was something about the angle of the girl’s head.

“Is that what writing a song is like? Endless repetition?” 

The Bardling jumped in place, pressing her lips flat.

“I hope you didn’t think I wouldn’t notice someone singing away right next to me,” Yennifer half asked. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

“I’m-” Bardling started, finally sounding her age. “It’s private.”

“So private you’re practicing next to me?”

Bardling pouted and in that moment Yennifer felt foolish. It had been under her nose the whole time. “You’re related to Jaskier the Bard.”

The girl startled up at her, looking confused for a moment. “You mean Uncle Julian.”

Vaguely Yennifer remembered Jaskier using that name. “I don’t remember him being particularly responsible, but I also wouldn’t expect him to leave his magical niece in the wild.”

The set of Bardling’s jaw was admirable if irritating. Wasn’t that just the way. 

“The two of you are in trouble, aren’t you? Special trouble. Does Geralt of Rivia know? He’s been looking for you. Nevermind. Obviously you haven’t met him. Well, until we get this settled there’s someone nearby that I trust to keep us safe until this all settles down.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, work has been a bit much, probably one or two chapters left. Hope you enjoy this one!

Triss was seated at her workbench when the door to the cabin was kicked in. She jerked back, spilling half ground honeywood flowers across the table. She had sent Cahir off to get more water from the creek after his all-night, all-night vigil had begun to make her feel uncomfortable.

“I’m just a simple herbalist,” she said, her hand clenching and unclenching against the end of the table. If she got rid of them they would be missed and more soldiers would come looking for them. “I want no trouble and I cause none.”

One of them laughed in an ugly hitching sound. Their swords were in their hands.

Her dreams last night were seeped in honey, and when she spoke, she felt it drip through her veins. She was in danger, she needed to act. She flung out a hand out, it was a moment too late. One of them was already in the house and all she managed to do was knock the soldier back against the wall. She reached over for the bowl of sand she kept for putting out fires and threw it toward the soldier’s face. He snarled, turning his head away so the sand hit uselessly against the wall. Triss lifted her hands, but the cabin was not that large. She was trapped indoors, she couldn’t call up vines from a wood floor or summon branches to block the path in front of her.

Before she could get her feet under her and run, the soldier was on her, his sword at her neck. A shout burst out of her before the edge of the sword made her go still to avoid cutting herself on accident.

“Where’s the girl?” the soldier snarled against her hair.

“What girl?” she asked.

Blood gushed down Triss’ front boiling hot and stinking. She gasped, ready for the sizzling pain of having her throat slit. Instead, the sword at her throat dropped to clang against the floor. The soldier at her back slumped against her. The blood pouring down her shoulder felt like it scalded her. She shimmied off to the side, letting the soldier fall to the floor beside his sword. His eyes were wide and blank, his neck gaped open like a startled mouth.

The dying man stood, his still pale, purple smudged under his eyes. The scars of whatever attacked him were thick and red. “Oh, um. Deepest apologies,” he said, spreading his arms in something like the beginnings of a courtly bow. “For your dress and your floor. I hope I didn’t cause you too much distress.” He weaved forward, his eyes fluttering and then swayed back into place. 

For all that Cahir had been bowing and scraping to the man’s unconscious form, Triss expected something more formal, perhaps princely. This man though, he loved her. His eyes smiled up to twinkle like aquamarine or sapphire or a babbling brook. There was something elastic about his mouth as if it had been stretched out into a smile and couldn’t manage to shrink down again. She had served long enough in court and been beautiful long enough to tell he was in love with her even though they had known each other just long enough for him to slit someone’s throat for her benefit. There was a distance to the love, a foot of space between it and her. It relieved her, to have the love somewhere other than pressing against her; to have it displayed like a pocket-handkerchief – pretty to look at but undeniably nothing to do with her. She is charmed all at once. She would bet Aretuza that she could stand naked in front of him with her naked sorceress body and his expression wouldn’t hold anything more than those in love merry eyes and that in love smiling mouth and that in love pocket-handkerchief of a feeling that he kept both displayed and in his own pocket. She could tell that he was likely unabashedly popular with the ladies.

There was a shout outside, and Cahir was there, the bucket dropped and the Nilfgaardian soldier slain with his own sword. Cahir’s face was dreadfully focused and calm, almost pensive. She turned to speak to the dying man, but she only managed to face him in time to watch his eyes roll up in his head as he hit the ground. She was on her knees in a moment, nevermind the blood. Her fingers palpated the flesh of his side now starting to scar. It wasn’t certain, but it felt like something in him had unspooled again, tore or loosened.

“Master Julian!” Cahir said far too loud and Triss can’t help rolling her eyes at him.

The man, Master Julian’s eyes fluttered, opened.

“Everyone safe?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Triss told him.

Master Julian’s eyes were a startling blue. “Where am I?”

“I’m Triss Marigold, you’re in my friend’s cabin. Cahir brought you here.”

Looking to Cahir, Master Julian flapped a hand against the soldier’s knee. “Help this nice lady get her floors clean, I made a bit of a mess. And don’t go hungry. Running lean is one thing, starving is another.”

Commands given Master Julian faded back into sleep, still and heavy as a corpse. He took more healing, both by potion and by magic as well as two more days of that heavy awful sleep. While Triss worked and occasionally tended to Master Julian, Cahir became a perfect little house husband. He scrubbed her floors and made meals that were all soldier sensibility – simple and filling, he fetched her water and swept the floors, determined to obey. 

No other soldiers had shown up yet, but it was a matter of time. She should have sent them away – Cahir had proved he was strong enough to carry Julian. But. There was more to the two of them. More than a man with loving eyes and a soldier. Enough perhaps to prove Triss wasn’t stupid. That soldier had asked after ‘the girl.’ There was only one girl the Nilfgaardian army was that determined to find. Master Julian and Cahir were involved with Princess Cirilla somehow. If Triss could get Cirilla to Aretuza it would be a powerful move for the Lodge of Sorceresses.

She suspected that Cahir knew her allowing them to stay in her temporary home was not strictly altruistic, but he said nothing and she said nothing. The man who didn’t die when he could have, with the eyes that fell in love with whoever was in front of him – she didn’t know what he was and saw no reason to risk going against the law of hospitality. It was an old law, and if whatever that man might be actually was some kind of ancient creature than it would be best to play politics in the ancient way. Triss enjoyed being kind, she liked being nice, but she also was what she was. She wanted to talk to the man alone without Cahir flitting about like a child at its mother’s skirts. As time went on she sent him out for longer and longer periods to chop wood and fetch more water than she needed, or to patrol around looking for other Nilfgaardian soldiers. She hasn’t seen anyone else, which means more likely than not that Cahir has been taking care of them anyway.

She looked out the front cabin window, watching Cahir pass the meadow in front of the cabin when a familiar face and a stranger appeared at the edge of the thicket. Yennifer was easy to spot anywhere with her dark hair and that way of walking she had as though she was forever dancing. There was a young colorful person next to her – too far away to discern gender until she screamed. Yennifer jolted back in surprise, hands raised. 

The girl let out a shriek that shook the woods and started pelting toward Cahir. “You killed him! You killed him, you monster!” 

Yennifer startled, looking between the two of them. The sorceress darted forward as though to catch the girl by the instrument strapped to her back, but the girl just dropped out of the strap and ran on. For a moment there was a shivering silence and then the girl screamed again. The sound she made flexed in and out of human vocal range – her voice taking on a sort of resonance. The wind began to lap against the sides of the cabin like the tide of the ocean. Yennifer grabbed hold of the girl and pulled her back shouting something too far away to hear. Triss dashed out the door to meet them.

“Yenn!”

“A little help!” Yenn called back.

Triss knew immediately who the girl cried over. “Girl,” she said, her hands reaching out to touch the girl’s shoulders. “Girl. He’s alright. He’s resting in the cabin. He’s alive.”

The girl’s pretty young face folded up with tears and she began to sob. “It was because of me. He died because of me.”

“He’s alive,” Triss said again. “He’s still alive inside.”

***

The bardling had curled her fingers around one of the Jaskier’s hands and rest her cheek against his chest. Her breathing was still uneven, still wet. “I can hear his heart.”

Yennifer was glad she had figured out the bardling’s uncle was Jaskier beforehand. She would have been cross if she had been surprised by it. The bard looked largely the same, the only difference since she’d last seen him was the longer hair that suited him better. She knew when she healed him the first time that there was something odd about the bard, but had put it out of her mind. There was definitely something magical about him. The bard had to be pushing fifty but looked younger than that, not too many years older than the bardling. Her mistake was due to his foolishness, a mistake she should have known better than to make. 

Jaskier was silly and prickly and so human, a child with a lute. It made sense to her now why he had taken such a sharp dislike to her – other than his silliness he was a man who evidently had a particular type of uniqueness about him. There was a benefit to it being Jaskier though, she knew him and she was much more likely to convince him to let her have the girl. The bard might hate her but he had never doubted her powers.

Triss rubbed a hand on the bardling’s back. “See, he’s fine. Just resting.” Triss looked at her, but Yennifer just shook her head.

“I believe I know him,” Yennifer said to cover her bases. “Is he your uncle?” she asked, already knowing the truth but wanting to hear how the bardling answered her. 

“Yes.”

“And that man out there?” she asked.

“My cousin,” the bardling said, her fingers tightening on the man’s hand. “He’s been chasing me. He wants to take me away but I don’t want to go. I want to be a bard like my uncle.”

“Has your cousin hurt you?” Yennifer asked. The bardling said nothing but she could hear the girl thinking. It was a smart thing to do, to wait.

The bardling inhaled and then sang, “The sun has risen sleepy head, the bears are stirring in their beds, the birds are stirring in their nests, wake up now you’ve had your rest.” It was exactly the sort of song an uncle or parent might sing to a child. It made something odd shift in Yennifer’s chest.

Triss jolted as the Jaskier’s eyes opened. He groaned, squeezing his niece’s hand. “Hello then, dear.”

The bardling let out a sort of soft sobbing sound and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I thought something happened to you.”

He curled a hand over the back of her head, stroking her hair with a gentle touch. “Don’t worry about me, I’m the uncle, I worry about you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the bardling told him her voice wet.

“I’m ridiculous,” Jaskier affirmed, a truer truth than had ever been spoken.

He looked up, face still tight and pained and startled at the sight of Yennifer standing there. For a moment the soft, sad, silly little bard was gone and in the bed, there was a man who would slit her throat without hesitation.

“Hello again,” Yennifer said. “You’re looking as well as could be expected of a man of your age.”

“Come now Yennifer, no need to be jealous. You don’t look a day over a hundred,” Jaskier shot back with far more panache than he usually did. It actually startled a smile out of her.

“Yennifer has been traveling with me,” the bardling said. There was a question in her voice asking if she did anything wrong.

Jaskier melted like butter on a stove. “Of course not, my darling. You kept yourself safe. I’m proud of you.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be the second to last chapter, but then no one would shut up. Please enjoy Jaskier doing a kegstand on respect women juice and gender politics!

Yennifer had a long history of learning to tread silently. After the argument she’d had last night where Triss had tried to convince her to tell what she knew about Jaskier and the girl, she had no interest in waking her sister sorceress. There was a Nilfgaardian soldier wandering around somewhere. She discovered him by accident making the fire in the kitchen. One of his hands had been bandaged up tight, but it didn’t seem to give him any hesitation or any difficulty.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked him.

His eyes drifted over her and then away, it occurred to her that Jaskier’s gaze did the same. Most men couldn’t keep their eyes off her breasts. If that wasn’t hint enough, now that she’d been in the company of two of whatever they were she could see the ways that the soldier didn’t quite move the way one would expect, there was something in the angle of his shoulders, in the way his spine shifted. “My hand is broken.”

“How did that happen?”

He looked at her and then away again.

“What are you?” she tried.

“I’m of Vicovaro,” he non-answered. She watched him just stand up and walk away out the door without another word. Annoying, but convenient. 

She didn’t know the soldier, she knew the fluttering flitter of Jaskier’s hands and the angle of his voice. He was the sort of person who flounced into one’s memory and set up shop there the way a weed might. She had heard his voice coming down off the mountain, his songs warbling and wet and caught in her ears like fishhooks so she had been singing _verily, verily doe in the meadow, eating the clover and kissing the moon_ under her breath for months any time she wasn’t on guard.

It was obvious to her now that there were hidden depths, but she was more likely to recognize them in someone she knew than someone she didn’t.

She murmured a word and gestured with her hand over the cauldron so the water weaved and shimmered and showed Jaskier dressed in clothes far more conservative than he usually bothered with – although it seemed he was still allergic to buttoning up his doublet all the way. The bardling sat on the end of his bed doing up her boots.

“-if I’m supposed to be something, shouldn’t I follow my destiny?” she asked.

In the muddled water of the cooking pot, Jaskier looked sad and angry and determined all at once. He reached out as though he were going to touch the bardling’s shoulder, but faltered with a wince to lean back against the wall again. “Don’t give in to destiny, don’t give in to anything. It doesn’t matter who’s been looking for you. The Witcher is an adult, his feeling are his responsibility. Don’t follow after him because you’re afraid he might feel sad. That is not your responsibility.”

“What should I do?” the bardling said, voice quiet. “I don’t know what I should do, what if I ruin everything?”

“If you are happy and healthy and strong then nothing is ruined,” Jaskier said. His body went stiff and tight as he shifted to sit next to his niece. He probably should have been left to sleep one more day, but he didn’t seem to be complaining. “People have told you what they expect from you your whole life. It’s not up to them.”

The bardling leaned to the side to rest her cheek against Jaskier’s shoulder, turning her head away from him and toward the wall. They fell so easily into the pensive pose that Yennifer was certain they must have done it a million times.

“You are not a tool or a weapon,” Jaskier spoke in soft musical tones. “You’re a person. You get to choose. If you want to cross the Blue Mountains and see how wide the world is then do that. If you want to stay here if you want to do battle. You’re a person, you have a right to be yourself.”

“Did someone try to make you a tool or a weapon?” the bardling asked.

Yennifer leaned back, her eyes narrowed at the two of them. Jaskier was so different with the child than he was with Geralt. There was something solid in him, a backbone of steel solid enough for someone else to lean against.

“No, not in the way you have been or you will be. It’s different for men,” Jaskier told him. “I’ve heard enough and I’ve seen enough. Your Aunt Renfri hasn’t been treated very well and your Aunt Odessa as well and they’re the best people I know. I worry sometimes that you’ll believe the world and you’ll tear yourself apart trying to reconcile the truth and the lies.”

“You worry about me a lot,” the bardling said, voice soft.

“Oh, Ciri. I can’t help it. It’s nothing you’re responsible for. It’s just because I care about you and I wouldn’t stop caring about you for the world.” Jaskier pressed something like a kiss against the bardling’s hair. Yennifer had figured out who the child was, just still the mention of her name was like lightning.

“What should I do after I have my name?” the bardling asked. “Please don’t tell me I have to choose, I know I have to and I don’t know what to choose.”

“Well, you know your Aunts would love to do the tour with you, they absolutely adore you,” Jaskier said. He made a sort of instinctive movement to put his arm around her and then had to stop halfway through.

“Could I travel with you?” 

“I would always love to have your company,” he told her, knocking his head against hers in a way that made her huff out a laugh. “I think it might be a good idea for you to stretch your legs on your own. Be your own person. It’s healthy for you to go out on your own.”

“Do you think I should travel with the witcher then? Geralt?”

Jaskier inhaled and then exhaled. “Geralt has an immense capacity for goodness, immeasurable kindness, and wisdom. He also has the emotional range of a cobblestone and the inability to deal with his own pain. You could learn a lot from him. He will also certainly hurt you without meaning to do so. That’s any relationship. I’ve hurt your feelings before.”

“And you always get more upset about it than I do,” the bardling said. She was so comfortable with her uncle, they were a couple of peas in a pod. “You’re a cry baby.”

“I am not!” Jaskier puffed up and there was the bard Yennifer knew hiding under all of that responsibility.

“I like Yennifer. She’s kind of funny, stuffy,” the barding said. “I didn’t really get to see any real magic. You said she was powerful.”

“She is. I don’t know that much about her that isn’t partial,” Jaskier said. “I don’t think you should become a sorceress. I believe it would be damaging to your spirit, but I think Yennifer could teach you a lot if you wanted that. She’s dangerous and selfish and wily. Those aren’t good things to be all the time, but sometimes those things can be incredibly helpful. If you kept your head on straight you could do well with her.”

“But is she nice?” the bardling asked.

“I’m not partial, I can’t give my opinion. I’ll only say look at your aunts, are they nice all the time?”

“No,” the bardling answered.

Jaskier nodded. “Yennifer hasn’t been nice to me, but she isn’t required to be. She doesn’t have to be my friend. She’s her own person with her own needs and desires. Yennifer doesn’t owe me anything so it’s not fair for me to make that kind of judgment.”

“Do you like her?” the bardling pressed.

“Not at all,” Jaskier told her almost cheerfully. “We are too different and too the same in the wrong combination. That’s not the question though, do you like her? What do you think about her?”

That made Yennifer feel… odd. Jaskier was being uncommonly fair considering their shared enmity. And uncommonly honest with his niece. At least some of the fairness, she had a feeling, sprung from the fact the bardling was his niece and as such he was trying to engender a certain self-defense against men telling the girl what to do. This Jaskier was miles away from the silly boy wandering off the path to pick berries. Once that desperate grating for Geralt’s attention was gone, the man actually seemed functional. She would think it was a clever ruse to put the witcher off the scent of whatever the bard was, but if that was the case why follow after him like a little puppy anxious for attention? Some people were just needy, desperate. Perhaps sudden parenthood and the telling off that Geralt gave him caused the man to grow up a little. To be fair, she and the bard had an odd push and pull with the witcher’s attention – how much of it they had and how much they wanted. She’d never seen his behavior when he wasn’t just traveling along, he had to have some level of competence or he’d be dead.

She knew Geralt was fond of the bard, but he was useless understanding people – what they wanted and why they did things. He thought simultaneously that people could see in the dark and that if they stubbed their toes they’d fall over dead. It had been months since she’d given Geralt any real thought, which was what he deserved. She was tired of thinking about men. Tired of considering their wants and feelings. There wasn’t a man alive who put her feelings first. Even Istredd, who was the best of a bad lot, had thought nothing of selling a secret that could have ruined her whole life and then chastised her for seeking the power she wanted to protect herself. All his sweet romantic thoughts of her were about having her again. Yennifer wanted to spend her time thinking of playing the game political with Tissaia and laughing with Triss and teaching the bardling. 

In the surface of the water, the bardling eased her uncle up, the two of them making for the door chatting about inane things Yennifer didn’t particularly care about. She waved her hand and the vision disappeared in time for Jaskier and the bardling to emerge from the spare bedroom.

“You’re up early,” Jaskier said with a certain neutrality to his voice.

The bardling looked between the two of them and Yennifer didn’t think it wise to play coy. Jaskier was aggressive and protective, but the bardling was the canny one between the two – smart in ways that wouldn’t occur to the bard. “New bed, couldn’t sleep.”

“There’s a Nilfgaardian wandering around here somewhere,” Yennifer said.

The bardling looked cross. “Cahir. He’s awful.”

“Triss said he rescued your uncle from death,” Yennifer said, feeling out the bardling’s feelings on the subject.

“Triss rescued uncle, Cahir just brought him here,” the bardling said. “Do you know how to heal people like she does?”

“I saved your uncle once,” Yennifer told her.

The girl, brightened up, leaning forward to swing her strange instrument around. “Yes! Uncle Julian sang me that song!” She strummed a few notes and sung, “The sorceress in gauze and gold, the canniest of all her kin, spun magic like a spider web to trap the genie tight within.”

Yennifer looked at Jaskier in surprise.

“It was a good story,” he told her, shoulders up around his ears. “I make my living on good stories. I didn’t mention you by name.”

“Have you written any songs, bardling?” Yennifer asked.

“Practice songs,” she shrugged.

“You brought in enough coin on the road.” Yennifer leaned back. “It’s a shame though, that you don’t focus on learning magic. You have great talent.”

“I’m a bard,” the girl said.

“You have great capacity for magic. I could make you powerful,” Yennifer said. It was the thing she wishes was told to her.

Ciri - because this was suddenly not the bardling, this was the princess – squeezed Jaskier’s hand and looked at him. 

Jaskier just rolled his eyes. “I can see when I’m being dismissed.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Ciri’s head and made his slow, steady way out of the cabin, closing the door behind him.

“You have him managed,” Yennifer said.

“Yennifer, I’m going to be a bard.”

She leaned back in her chair, “You cursed an entire town untrained. Do you have any idea the sort of power you could amass once you knew what you were doing? You could have whatever you want.”

“People only seek after power when they’re weak,” Ciri said, voice knapped to an obsidian edge. “I’m not weak.”

Yennifer felt a mixture of anger and a grudging respect. “Every young lady thinks that. Every young woman thinks she’ll live forever.”

“When my training is complete we can talk again,” the rhythm of Ciri’s voice seemed to measure out the meter of someone else’s. Perhaps of Jaskier’s, perhaps of these mysterious aunts of hers. “I love singing, it makes me happy. And I’m going to find myself in my music. I haven’t yet, but I will. I don’t care about power, I don’t know anybody who didn’t hurt somebody. Everyone talks about how my grandmother was powerful, but I had to find out for myself what she did to get that power. I’m sure too that you had to do things to people too.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re too young,” Yennifer told her.

“Maybe not the meaning, but the shape of it.” Ciri sort of shivered in her seat, scooting back from the table. “I want to wait until I’m older and I know more before you teach me. If you teach me I don’t want you to trick me, I don’t want you to trick me into being what you think I should be. I want to be myself.”

Truth seemed to be the tact to take with the girl. “I’m obviously disappointed.”

That seemed to soften the girl up some, “I want us to be friends. You could travel with us.”

If nothing else, Yennifer was old enough to know that as soon as she was finished being angry she would admire the bardling’s resolve. The girl would have people trying to bring her to heel for the rest of her life, why should Yennifer start the pattern now?


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's get wrought! I had someone tell me once I wrote like a soap opera and I surely do. This is finally it! The second to last episode! Let's get emotional kinders!

Cahir watched Master Julian and the hatchling together. Master Julian moved smoothly, hands in a constant flutter, little Ciri sat with her head bowed over her instrument. “You’re struggling in the middle of the verse, too much tension in your wrist. Relax, go loosey-goosey.”

“Loosey goosey,” Ciri responded, shaking her arms out. Her voice was warm and high, soft like the dun of a fawn or the brown of a bird’s wing. It swooped in even tone without dipping, it was beautiful. Master Julian was right, what could Cahir teach the girl about Singing, about anything.

Ciri straightened up and tried again. Master Julian was as gentle as he was relentless. The bard demanded the sort of perfection that it was obvious the princess was capable of, with the gentleness a singer of her caliber deserved. Cahir watched them with a curled-up sort of jealousy. He remembered still the snap of a hand against the back of his neck as he grated his way through what Master Kuhl did his best to treat him. He felt so small watching the two of them. It had been hours since their lesson started, all songs disconnected and then pulled up together.

Then Master Julian looked up and saw him, his eyes considering.

“Cahir, come here,” Master Julian said, voice with an edge in it that made the soldier’s head drop and his teeth bare. “I’m not arguing, come here.”

“Uncle,” Ciri said, her eyes still narrowed in Cahir’s direction.

“We’re stuck with him for now, I want to see what we’re working with. Come here, Cahir, we don’t have all day. Ciri, go in for lunch if you want.”

She made a buzzing hum at him and Cahir hummed back.

“I’m not going to repeat myself a third time,” Master Julian said.

Cahir presented himself with his lip pulled into something like a snarl, looking down the noble angle of his nose; Master Julian reached for him and he took a sharp step back.

“Calm yourself,” Master Julian told him. “You haven’t been feeding, it’s made you too sharp. You’ve been looking after Triss, that’s good of you.”

Cahir concentrated on breathing.

“Indecision isn’t good for you, you believe things very intensely, don’t you?”

“I like to know how things work.”

Mouth pulled up at an angle, Master Julian flapped a hand at him. “Ciri isn’t going to be comfortable with you until I can counsel with her, and I can hardly do that until I understand you, now can I? I don’t know what to do with you. You’re determined, and probably quite clever. You have no manners though and hardly know how to do anything. An uninformed cuckoo is a danger to themselves as much as others. It’s not your fault, your teacher did such a terrible job.”

Curling up, on the wrong foot and wounded. “You can’t just insult my teacher to me.”

“You were taught by Lish who couldn’t be bothered to keep track of his progeny.” Master Julian gave him a look that was as pitying and it was patient. “Maia, first of the council, is the best teacher and she taught me. And I will say whatever I want about Lish considering he’s in exile. One of his little monsters almost killed me. Now stand up straight, I need to get the measure of you. Sing me something.”

“I can’t.”

“You will,” the Uncle pressed a hand against his belly, something Lish had done many times. _Sing from your gut._ “Don’t worry about a Song, just pick a note from here, where I’m putting pressure.”

Cahir closed his eyes and did what he was ordered. He felt the hard, impersonal press of the pad of Master Julian’s thumb and fingertips through the fabric of his jerkin. The pressure increased for a moment and Cahir went silent. It was as if they spoke through touch, through Cahir’s unsteadiness and Master Julian’s too many words.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because I almost died and I can’t take a risk with Ciri. Nilfgaard is coming, I may die yet. I can’t leave this undone,” Master Julian told him. 

“And you don’t trust me,” Cahir said, an answer to the question he’d asked himself.

“You’re in the wrong range,” Master Julian said as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“What?”

Under Master Julian’s eyes were dark smudges,“You were trained too young. There’s a reason training ends around puberty. Like most children, you were probably a soprano, but as you grew older your voice dropped. You’re trying to sing far too high. Relax your throat and match me as I go: hmmm.”

“Hmm?”

Master Julian pressed against his belly. “Still too tight in the throat, relax and go again. Hmm,” he lifted his eyebrows at him.

“Hmm.”

“Better. You know the basics of course, but I suspect you're going to need a tedious amount of reteaching. Wartime is a pain for this sort of thing, but perhaps we can get you reassigned.”

“I already have my Song,” Cahir said.

“And you deserve to be able to Sing it properly,” Master Julian told him. The Uncle looked at him for a moment, mouth all pulled up at one angle. “There’s potential in you, you’re as little suited to be a tool in someone’s hand as Ciri is.”

He blinked at the man. “I didn’t question what Lish told me. I didn’t question him, or my commanding officer. That’s not what a soldier does. If every soldier questions orders there are delays, men die, kingdoms fall. I was ordered to get the girl and I thought it was just destiny lining up. No matter how I wanted other honors, I had been given an order. I don’t think that’s something you understand. I think you’re contrary.”

“Very,” Master Julian agreed.

“You are contrary even to yourself when you would have done better to destroy me. Your mercy almost killed you and I don’t know that you regret it,” Cahir said.

“I don’t.” Master Julian put his hands on his hips, sort of squinted at him.

“I don’t understand.” He didn’t. Master Julian should have died a thousand ages ago. He should have been mistaken for useless or unsubstantial or weak. Cahir still struggled to see the power in the bard. If he hadn’t been bound and spared and released; if Master Julian hadn’t pressed fingertips to Cahir’s belly and ordered him with that pressure.

“Our people are dying, why speed up the process. Give yourself some credit.”

He didn’t know what that meant. “I should leave. There’s nothing you can do with me until Ciri is done with her training and I only upset her. I don’t want to.”

“That seems for the best. You know your physical capabilities even if Lish taught you so You will be careful; I won’t have you acting ridiculous. I have responsibility for you now and I expect you to take care of yourself,” Master Julian’s bluster reminded Cahir of a mother hen, all sharp clucking and soft feathers. They were of the same height, but somehow all that puffing up made something almost small – someone who needed to be protected in equal measure to their desire to protect.

“Yes, sir,” Cahir said. “As you say. You know why Lish wants Cirilla.”

Master Julian’s face crumpled around the angles, the stern loftiness performing its away across the bard’s face just shifting away. “Yes, I know. The sword and ax will have to wait. I won’t have her used, not by anyone.” Moving forward, Master Julian put his arms around him. A soft sound startled its way out of his throat. It froze him to have another human body so warm and so close, Master Julian’s cheek pressed to his own. “If you bother Ciri again or try to drag her off I will put the dagger in your eye this time just like I would with anyone. Still, there’s nothing wrong with you some proper training can’t fix.”

Then with a few hardy slaps on the back, Master Julian released him.

***

Yennifer was inside the cottage, getting a good meal in when she heard a sound from outside, the jingling of a harness, the sound of hooves. Her hand curled and relaxed at her side. Ciri looked up from where she was finishing her stew and Triss had portalled off sometime before lunch. Jaskier was outside, but the bard could care for himself.

She smoothed down her dress as she stood, “Bardling, go into your uncle’s room and shut the door. Do not come out, no matter what you hear.”

“But what if-”

Yennifer interrupted her. “I can take care of myself and there are those who can use magic to make you hear anything they want in order to draw you out of hiding.”

For a moment it looked like Ciri was going to argue, but then she nodded and excused herself. It might be someone just passing by, she wasn’t going to open the door unless she had to do so. She breathed in, then out, and held the bread knife from lunch hidden in her skirts.

There was a knock at the door, solid and businesslike.

She opened the door to a woman of perhaps twenty with large brown eyes and sort of ruddy leather armor. The woman didn’t look Nilfgaardian, but then she could be a bounty hunter. There was an odd feeling twined about her, curling like grape vine curling over her in something that wasn’t magic and wasn’t even close to mundane. The woman’s horse was heaving for breath behind her, foam around its mouth. It had been ridden hard to get here.

For the narrowest sliver of a moment, something passed over the woman’s face, perhaps recognition. “Are you Yennifer of Vengerberg?” the young woman asked.

“I’m sorry, dear. I think you are mistaken,” she said.

A second woman rode up, her horse almost stumbling from exhaustion. She had a scrappy, durable look about her – the sort of girl who knew her way around – with a wide and expressive mouth pressed tight with worry. A wine-red cloak was wrapped around her shoulders so Yennifer couldn't tell if she was armed or a mage or a countess.

"Odessa?" the brown-eyed woman said with a battle-hardened familiarity. Her head lowered and her nostrils flared like a particularly annoyed bull.

“Renfri,” the woman in wine red said in warning, tensed her hands around the reins. “This is where the Sound came from, I can feel it in the air. Rage and heartbreak.” A mage then.

"If you've hurt one hair on her head," Renfri snarled, her hands gripping Yennifer by the front of her dress and dragging her up onto her toes.

The bread knife shattered against the woman’s shoulder like spun glass on a marble floor. Yennifer stared at where the handle pressed uselessly against Renfri’s jerkin and then up at where Renfri’s smile had done wild and wide. “Sorry, dear. There’s not a blade that doesn’t break against me now.”

Magic it was then. Renfri all but tackled her through the door of the house, leaving Odessa to flutter in her cloak and half tumble off the horse. Yennifer tried swinging a spell at her, something to slow the madwoman down or throw her off, but everything seemed to flow off her back. If a blade didn’t work against the woman then perhaps something else would.

“Where’s the girl?” Renfri repeated.

“Renfri,” Odessa said, moving in counterpoint with them across the room. 

Yennifer grabbed a lunch plate off the table and slammed it down over Renfri’s head. The bread knife might be in pieces, but the broken plate drew narrow lines of blood on the mad woman’s cheek. Hopefully, the bardling would be wise enough to jump out the window and run for her uncle while Yennifer distracted these two. She shattered the ceramics against Renfri’s head until the woman had to stumble back, shaking her head. The woman bounced on her toes, body tensing to strike like a snake’s but Yennifer couldn’t see from where. Would the woman get her with a shoulder to the gut? Lock up with her and drive her back into the wall?

“Come now, Renfri. Let’s just talk,” Odessa said, her hands fluttering.

Yennifer vaulted over the kitchen table, her body coiling and pressing and springing so she landed on the balls of her feet. As her body landed she pulled the chair up from where it was tucked under the table and lifted it up to her shoulder. Renfri came after her, moving viper fast and effortlessly strong.

“I feel like-” Odessa said, darting between them just in time to catch the chair across the face and went down in a tumble. The roar Renfri made in response turned Yennifer’s blood to ice. The woman leaped at her like a tigeress, taking her down against the floor of the cabin. It was only Yennifer’s reflexes that kept her from catching Renfri’s fist to the face. Her knuckles hit the floor with a _thunk_ that raised dust. Odessa was curled up to the side, her face turned away.

Geralt burst into the cabin, because that was what the situation needed, a giant man blocking off the exit. What was he doing here anyway? "Renfri! Renfri stop!”

“She’s a mage!” Yennifer knew that pain. She felt that pain splitting the layers of her skin and tracking the movement of blood in her veins.

“She isn't like that. She wouldn't hurt a child." Geralt dithered nearby which was just typical, but also very unlike the witcher. His eyes were so wide and young. Yennifer had only seen him look that young and that wide-eyed once before.

"All mages are the same!" Renfri snarled with enough rage and pain in her voice that Yennifer went still with familiarity. Renfri shook her again. "All they care about are their sick desires. Maybe she’s the one who hurt Julian."

“I know her,” Geralt said, crouching down, hands out. “I would have smelled her on the road. She wasn’t there. Yennifer would never hurt a child.”

Renfri roared again, a sound full of ancient vengeance and rivers of blood. Yennifer snarled right back, she wasn’t going to give an inch, not a single inch.

“Renfri, Renfri. It’s alright. Everything’s alright,” Geralt murmured. At least he knew better than to try and grab the woman.

“She hurt Odessa,” Renfri said, quieter.

“I’m sure it was an accident and a misunderstanding,” Geralt said, which was very reasonable of him.

“Oh, my lovely face,” proclaimed Odessa in a deep pool of manufactured anguish, voice still a bit muffled.

Renfri gave Yennifer one last shake and darted over to look over to where Odessa was curled on the floor with the back of her hand resting on her forehead. The woman gathered Odessa up in her arms with more care than was probably needed to, using a gentle touch to move Odessa’s hands away from where they covered a split lip and the beginnings of a bruised cheek. Odessa lounged over Renfri as though the woman was a fainting couch and forcing her to take all of her weight.

“What shall Mama say if she saw me all disarranged as though I were in a common brawl?” Odessa whined. The posing and fluttering made the tense angle of Renfri’s shoulders drop, her snarling mouth relax. “How am I to perform if I look like a ruffian?”

Renfri made a soft sound of relief that told Yennifer what she needed to know about the matter. Under the cloak, Odessa wore a jaunty little costume it took Yennifer a moment to place as a performer’s dress, a bard’s garb. Connections were forming.

“I can smell Jaskier here, and some familiar scents,” Geralt said.

Renfri was tsking at Odessa, while the bard held a lacy handkerchief to her lip.

Odessa gave Yennifer a sort of sideways look from where she lounged like a queen in Renfri’s arms. “We do apologize for the confusion. Renfri has had some rather poor experiences with mages. We’re Ciri’s aunts. We separated and when we tried to find them again we found a road covered in blood.”

With narrowed eyes, Yennifer righted herself, looking over Renfri breathing hard as she calmed herself down and Odessa trying to pretend she wasn’t gushing blood from the mouth. At Renfri’s side was a short sword that she hadn’t even touched during the fight.

“Are you alright, Yennifer?” Geralt asked. He leaned toward her, but made no move to touch her.

“Fine, I’m fine. Except being assaulted in my own home.”

“I’m sorry about this,” Geralt said. “They just took off yesterday.”

“You sensed the bardling’s distress,” Yennifer said.

“I want to see her,” Renfri said. Odessa’s hand tightened on the woman’s knee. “If this mage wouldn’t hurt a child I want to see the girl.”

“Renfri, please,” Geralt said again, shoulders almost around his ears with nervous hesitance.

Yennifer got to her feet, dusting herself off. The cabin was a mess, Triss was going to have kittens. Honestly, she wasn’t that upset about Renfri, the woman’s rage was understandable. There was a certain level of respect she could have for a woman who was willing to run face-first into a sorceress’ house to defend her niece. There was something about Geralt of djinn nonsense fame bowing and scraping to a petite angry woman who barely gave him attention that instantly charmed her. “Oh, don’t fret, Geralt,” Yennifer said with a toss of her hair. “If she really wanted to kill me she would have, isn’t that right?”

Renfri’s look was savage and beautiful. “Dead mages can’t be interrogated.”

Yennifer put a hand to her heart. “I think I’m in love.” She would eventually defeat Renfri in battle of course. She’d have to learn to use a mace, which would be tedious but worth it when she had taken Renfri to the ground.

Geralt looked a little concerned, Renfri and Odessa laughed together in something like delight. She wanted to know how Renfri had gained her imperiousness to both sword and spell, but that was a discussion once they were better acquainted. She went to the door without any more hesitation to reunite the women. The bardling had been waiting poised with her little triangle lute thing in her arms, her pale strained face relaxed when Odessa danced past her into the room to take the bardling in her arms. She covered the girl in tears and kisses and wrapped her arms around her. The bard is a song in motion, her voice rich enough to get drunk on and sweet. Ciri wrapped her arms around her aunt, taking fistfuls of the well-cut doublet. There was a presence at Yennifer’s shoulder, Renfri with the power like grapevines and the speed of a viper.

“She’s your woman?” she asked Renfri. The face made in response said _complicated_ , and Yennifer understood that.

“She pretends to be silly so people won’t be terrified of her,” Renfri told her, which told her nothing and everything all at once.

“Some women love someone as best they can,” Yennifer said. Her own experience had been in the other direction in knowing women like cats who didn’t overflow but left symbolic mice with their guts out on her stoop and then clawed at her face if she dared to say a word about it. Odessa, Yennifer suspected, was like Jaskier in that she loved so much that none of her affection belonged to one person in the way most people meant, but that instead, it was her consistency, her return, her longsuffering that was the best indication of her adoration. Yennifer could see it in the way the woman pranced about pressing kisses to her niece’s hair and in the way she had lounged over Renfri like ballast to keep the mad woman from going for Yennifer’s throat. Frivolous and iron spun all at once. A sorceress had to learn to read the room. She wondered if Jaskier and Odessa weren’t siblings, they didn’t quite look enough alike to be twins for all that they were echoes of each other.

Odessa’s fingers fiddled with Ciri’s curls, straightening them while Ciri still refused to let go of her. “Don’t you want to say hello to your Aunt Renfri?”

For a moment Ciri separated herself and looked adrift and lost used she found port again in the arms of Renfri. It was a different sort of hug, rough and formal, still tight enough to measure the strength of Renfri’s ribs. “I was scared,” Ciri admitted. Renfri didn’t pepper her with kisses and mother-hen flustering but rubbed a hand over her head so her hair stuck out.

“That happens,” Renfri told her, she combed down her hair with her finger and for a moment pressed her cheek to the crown of her head. “What a clever girl you are. Friends with a sorceress and a cabin in the woods after a week. If we left you alone for a month you’d have a manor house and a griffin.”

Ciri pressed her face to Renfri’s neck making a sound that might be a laugh.

“Just below a griffin, am I?” Yennifer asked.

“And just three steps below a dragon, you’re welcome,” Renfri answered. “Come on then, you’ve acquired a witcher too. Come and meet him.”

Taking Renfri’s hand, the bardling let herself be led into the chaos of the main room where Geralt was standing awkwardly amidst the mess. Geralt looked like he’d been hit between the eyes with a large stone. “I looked for you,” he said. “I went to Cintra, but I couldn’t find you.”

“Uncle Julian found me,” she said. “He’s teaching me to be a bard.”

“A noble profession,” Geralt said, more awkward than Yennifer had ever seen him.

She released Renfri’s hand to approach the witcher, not timid or fearful. She picked up one Geralt’s hands, considering it. He curled his fingers around her much smaller hands and then released them. “Am I your child surprise?”

Geralt’s eyes were wide and overwhelmed. “Yes.”

“Are we going to be friends?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

She moved forward to give him a hug. “I hope so too.”

He wrapped his arms around her carefully as though he might break her with sudden movement. 

“Have you met my aunts Renfri and Odessa, and my friend, Yennifer?” she asked him.

Geralt looked so helpless, “Hmm. They’re very nice.”

She twitched suddenly in his arms and he released her at speed. “Uncle Julian! He’s nearby!” She took Geralt by the hand to drag him out of the cabin, her feet moving nimbly around the shattered pottery and pieces of chair.

They all followed out after her, following her like ducklings. Jaskier had just entered the meadow in front of the house, looking thoughtful, his lute over his shoulder. And then he saw the crowd there.

Jaskier flustered, gaze not quite meeting the group until Yennifer realized no, not meeting Geralt’s gaze. “Oh,” he said. “Um, I.”

Jaskier was always such a personality, but suddenly he looked alone and small.

“I’ll, um,” he said and sort of skipped backward toward the woods. “That is-” And then he was gone, putting space between himself and the cabin.

The bardling looked up at her Aunt Odessa who just patted her back. She smiled softly, soothingly, “He’ll come back, he just needs a moment.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We did it! This is the end of this story! Although of course, everyone is going to have an adventurous but happily ever after. Thank you for everyone who commented and kudo'd. This was a pleasure of a journey. Hugs and kisses and may you all travel with friends!

Geralt found Jaskier out sitting in a small clearing in the woods, eyes set on nothing. Odessa had given him another one of those looks that made him feel smaller, but this time, not something to be discarded, just something to be offered some care. Ciri had looked confused but had gone with her aunts and with Yennifer without complaint.

“Jaskier,” he said. What else was there to say?

“Hmm.”

Geralt tried again. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re not- I’m sorry,” he put forward. The curve of the bard’s back was odd, broad and narrow all at once. Something to be crushed and something to lean against.

“You’re very young, Geralt,” Jaskier said, still not looking at him.

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Geralt told him. “It’s an excuse. Whatever I say, I’m just very young and I don’t have to take responsibility.”

Finally, finally, Jaskier looked at him. Jaskier was surrounded by people he loved and was alone all at once, like fireflies in a jar. Geralt didn’t think he was young as much as Jaskier was very old. “Do you want to take responsibility for what you’ve said?”

“You are very kind to me and I’m not capable of giving that back.”

The bard began to look away and Geralt grabbed him, it made him feel panicked that Jaskier wasn’t looking at him.

“I want to not hurt you. I want to be good to you. When I do something wrong, I want you to hurt me back,” Geralt told him.

“I can’t.”

Geralt’s hands fell off of Jaskier’s shoulders.

“I can’t.”

“I don’t think I ever understood anything about you,” Geralt told him. “I kept thinking I understood you and why you did things and you would twist and shift over and under things. Even if I loved you as much as you love me, it wouldn’t be in the same way. I want to not hurt you.”

“I’m not human, Geralt,” Jaskier told him with such a quiet dread in his voice that Geralt knew in a moment it was true.

Geralt stared at him. He didn’t understand why Jaskier was trusting him with this when he had already proved himself untrustworthy.

“The thing I am, it feeds,” Jaskier said. Geralt had always thought the bard was flighty, jumped from thought to thought because of carelessness because everything in his head was equally vain and useless. Now that he had interacted with Odessa and the way Renfri had adapted to her he suspected that Jaskier’s mind just didn’t act like a human’s did, that it made different connections in different ways. Jaskier held his hands up in front of him like a bowl. “There are strings to pull or honeycomb to press a thumb against and if a being is capable of feeling then that emotion builds up and up and up until it overflows the cup of emotional range and all that extra drips down into the beak of the thing roosting in my ribs. I can eat until my stomach breaks open but I can starve without feeding.”

Geralt looked at the bowl of Jaskier’s hands, the callouses on his fingers.

“My people aren’t from the world. They were dragged in by the impact of worlds coming together. They tucked themselves into the shapes of the people living here, they mated with them. I’m not designed for this world. I can’t survive on my own.”

Geralt looked up at him.

“I can’t, Geralt. I am dependent on the people here. My people are dying. I can’t survive here like I’m supposed to, lean and half-starving so all I am is rib bones and music,” Jaskier made a soft sound, tears overspilling his eyelashes. “But I’m a hybrid, even if the way was open again I couldn’t go back, I’m too human.”

 _I don’t want you to die,_ Geralt thought. _I don’t want you to suffer._ So Jaskier was some kind of vampire. Geralt had never seen or suspected him doing any harm, except when he took umbrage with something someone directed at Geralt. It also explained Jaskier’s lack of fear. “Hmm,” he said.

Jaskier’s hands fell into his lap. “If I’m dying anyway, if I have live starving, then why shouldn’t I forgive you? So that when you’re gone I can comfort myself with smugness? So that I can warm myself at night with the thought of denying you compassion?”

Inside Geralt’s chest, his heart had sped up, it hurt. He felt too big inside and panicked and sort of rotten in his gut.

Jaskier’s hands curled in front of his, his tears hit the insides of his wrists and his fingertips, all disordered. “Why do we have to make an accounting? No relationship is ever even, all friends do things for each other that can never be repaid or forgiven. There is too much to a life to record on a ledger. My heart breaks every day in self-pity and loneliness. _Aunt Maia._ I wish you were able to understand my heartbreak. Just don’t do it again and let it go. Just please don’t do it again and let it go. Just don’t punish me for caring about you anymore, my heart isn’t so steady you can cut your pain into it when you don’t have the balls to deal with it yourself. I just want to love you again. You have had so much pain in your life, please just let me make you happy.”

One at a time, Geralt wrapped his arms around Jaskier and pulled him close. It hurt to do in a way he didn’t understand. His first instinct was to run, to push away, to strike out if necessary. He suspected this was simply an instinctive reaction to whatever Jaskier was, not something he really needed to worry about. The bard talked so much and Geralt didn’t understand half of it, but he had needed to talk. Geralt understood the draining of poison. Inside Geralt’s arms, Jaskier was small and manageable, quiet, understandable. Everything turned into contained breaths and curled up limbs. A head with a heavy hand to tuck under a chin and arms to fold up close. Shivers racked Jaskier’s body, the bard felt light, full of bird bones.

Geralt breathed in and then out. “You say things that are poetry. I don’t understand you.” He tightened his arms around Jaskier and held on. It hurt to do it, the shape it put his body into a dreadful vulnerable twist of it. And yet he held on, he wanted to hold on.

Jaskier laughed. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Do you still want to be my friend?” He never understood why Jaskier wanted to be in his friend in the first place, but he’d wear almost any title now for the familiarity of Jaskier stumbling with sleepy eyes around camp or the way the bard hummed low and solemn tunes to himself as he readied for sleep. There was a comfort with the bard, an allowance to be soft. He was terrified of how to care for Cirilla as he was, all flint and silver and the blood of people who trusted him.

“Yeah,” Jaskier breathed out.

Geralt held him very tight to his chest so he wouldn’t have to look at him and lose his nerve. “Then you are my friend and I’m sorry.”

Jaskier laughed against his chest and then was quiet and curled up as a kit fox, helpless and dangerous all at once.

***

“Don’t worry, they’ll be back,” Odessa said, from where she was helping Renfri tidy the mess up.

“Hmm,” Ciri said, she could feel the way her mouth pulled up at the corner. She peered out the window again. The ladies were all talking together about boring things, she listened with half an ear. The other half of her hair was tuned to the sound that seemed to follow the air around Uncle Julian. There was a large dark shape moving through the trees, a flash of bright blue and then there was the strange shy witcher with a sort of gruff look on his face and Uncle Julian walking beside him with his head tucked down at a thoughtful angle.

She ran out of the cabin into the early evening air, the flowers bobbing soft against her ankles. The air had a warmth to it, something she recognized now as the soft ebb and flow of her uncle’s Song in the air. She had been thinking of Songs a lot lately, she was starting to recognize words and phrases, starting to find herself humming tunes she couldn’t remember ever learning.

She stopped once she saw Uncle Julian’s face, he looked like he had been crying. His face was sort of puffy and pink, but he smiled at her his soft Uncle Julian smile when he saw that she saw him. She looked between the two men, but they gave nothing away. “Hello, Ciri, darling,” Uncle Julian said and opened his arms for her to hold onto him until she felt less nervous.

When she pulled back again she considered asking Geralt outright if he had made Uncle Julian cry, but she couldn’t think of a way to do that without sounding like she was ten so she refrained.

Uncle Julian squeezed at Geralt’s shoulder with one hand, smiling at her. “Did I ever tell you of my adventures traveling with Geralt?” 

She could recognize Uncle trying to lead the conversation somewhere. “Yes?”

“A good thing to, he never learned to tell his own story. All witchers are like that, you know. Haven’t the skills to let the people know of their magnificent talents.” Uncle Julian spun her so that she walked between the two of them, the bard and the witcher with her arms linked in theirs.

Ciri had been thinking while Julian and Geralt were gone, she’d been considering her options. Uncle Julian said it was up to her, and she appreciated that, but she didn’t need his permission to do what she wanted. “It’ll be good practice to become a bard,” she said. “To travel with him and Yennifer,” she said, looking straight ahead. Both Geralt and Julian faltered when they heard her, but Julian just laughed a happy laugh at her. The sort he used when she had done something to particularly make him proud of her. 

“You’ll have to ask Yennifer first, I’m sure she has a lot of magical business to do,” he said. “But you’re right, it’ll be excellent training for you. You decided this morning, did you?”

She faltered a little under his teasing, but put her chin in the air like Odessa would do when someone tried to underpay her. “The most important thing is completing my education. I have a limited amount of time before I can apply to Oxenfurt. Imagine how jealous everyone will be if I arrive with a real ballad under my belt.”

Uncle Julian made an acknowledging sound. 

Ciri wanted to learn things right now, to get bigger inside herself, to gain all she could. Something was already growing inside her, fluttering under her ribs and she was as excited as she was frightened by the prospect. Ciri felt it in her bones, a song fluttering up from the dark like the shimmer of dusk turning into constellations. She saw in her mind the slow easy circles the moon made across the sky, so like the circle she made as she danced, her feet taking wide turns around the campfire as Uncle Julian spun with her. He always seemed to almost sparkle then, turn gold in the candlelight. Now Ciri felt odd around the edges like when she looked at the sun and then away only to have a miniature red sun floating in her vision. Her name was trundling toward her from the vast skyscapes inside her, her Song was orbiting closer and she didn’t know what she’d be then. Maybe if she had lots of different people around her she could learn the way she wanted to be.

She snuck a look up at Geralt, she remembered what her uncle had said about him. Large men made her feel nervous anyway, even knowing she could kill them, even knowing she had people who would kill them for her. He could be kind, she remembered, and he could be thoughtless. She stopped, looking up at the witcher who seemed very quiet and shy.

“Do you want to travel with us, Geralt?” she asked after it occurred to her too late that she should have asked first anyway.

He tried to smile, a small creaking thing that disappeared faster than it appeared. “It would be an honor to travel among friends.”

“Yes,” Uncle Julian said, his smile like honey. “Let us travel with friends.”


End file.
